After a long while of just sitting there and watching Zeres enjoying his coffee and cookies, Iryz finally broke the silence. Even though she had enjoyed the wonderful scenery of a beautiful man snacking in her home, it was time to get down to business.
"May I ask you something?" Iryz said hesitantly. She had not wanted to ask about this matter initially – at least not this soon – but she was really curious about what had happened to the spell that they had been busting their asses, day and night, looking for. What happened to Alicia? She just could not stop thinking about her no matter how many times she had stopped herself from asking Zeres about her. Because well…
"Of course. What is it?" he lifted his gaze at her, chewing on a chocolate chip cookie very slowly, as though savouring every single bite of it.
"About the spell…" she trailed off, trying to gauge his expression first before continuing on the topic. When she did not seem to see any negative signs that might be pointing to her about to ruin the atmosphere with her question, she gathered her courage and continued. "What happened to it? Did you give it to someone to use it?"
It was so hard to make herself ask directly about Alicia, maybe because she was still afraid that his blissful expression right now might darken again or even become sullen at the mention of her name. Even after the things they had talked about a while ago, and even though he had said Alicia would never be his lover, still, Iryz knew and understood what Alicia meant to him. She had seen his desperation to save her the entire time he was in her book shop rummaging through the books, looking for that elusive spell. She had seen how he had run off just at the thought that Alicia might be in some kind of trouble.
If only she could ignore this but… after thinking hard while she had been making cookies, she realized that she badly needed to talk to Zeres about Alicia after all. They could not be sweeping it under the carpet just because they both did not want to deal with it. Because if not, this will only be that storm cloud hanging over her head that would keep bothering her.
"I have it securely with me." he answered honestly. "I haven't used it yet."
Iryz creased her brows. "You have not used it yet? Why? Weren't you in so much of a hurry to find it?"
"There are… some changes. So I still need to wait for six more days to use it."
"Why… do you need to wait for six more days? I thought it was urgent and that you're running out of time." She suddenly did not understand what was happening. Both of them, specially him, worked day and night to find it. He never even rested.
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