It was her turn to cut him off. “The necklace, I know. I made sure you had it when you were unconscious. We will need to speak to the Queen, and—what do you mean, your father? You mean your mentor, right? Of course; I assume he has been playing the part of your father and—” The look on Eric’s face betrayed his thoughts. She was beginning to see what was going on here but had a hard time accepting it.
“You have been living in Bryer all this time, have you not?” she said in a voice that grew in intensity with every word. “You have been training for years...have you not? You are ready to take your place in history and stop the—do you even know what I’m talking about?!” She was outright screaming now. “What have you been doing all this—” she grabbed her side as she collapsed on one knee, obviously more hurt than she had let on. Eric ran to her side, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t touch me! I said I’m fine!” she spat out the words.
“Alright, listen to me,” Eric said in a slow, calm voice. “You’re right. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re obviously upset about that, but we will get to the bottom of everything, I promise.” He wished he really believed that. “But right now you’re hurt, and it requires attention, OK?”
She looked him right in the eye for the first time with a burning stare. Then, tight-lipped, she nodded her head in agreement. He started walking toward her bag when he stopped halfway and looked back at her. “I didn’t say thank you for what you did last night.” The heat in her eyes faded for a second before the scowl returned, almost as if she were afraid to show weakness.
“It was my job,” she said in barely a whisper, more to herself than to him. Eric retrieved the small bag of supplies. He started to lift the side of her shirt to check the worst cut. She angrily jerked away from him. “I’ll do it!” she said in an irritated voice. “I’m just going to touch it up now, the least you can do is stay out of the way!”
Eric just set the bag down beside her and walked back by the fire. He began busying himself by taking his time kicking dirt on it. They were going to leave soon; at least it felt like he was doing something useful. As he half-heartedly went through the motions, his mind wandered to thoughts of Aena. He’d never really thought of himself as gullible until now. Was he really that easily tricked? She was leading him around by the nose like a bloody fool!
And this other girl...Jade. She had come just in the nick of time to save his life. But what was she talking about? His training? He had just found out his father was not really his father, but for some reason this girl already knew that. Someone he had never met before knew more about his life than he did! When she realized all this information was new to him, she became angry, as if he was supposed to know the whole time.
In fact, now that his head was clear, he could remember last night even better. He remembered the battle in surprising detail. Those two girls were good, possibly the best he had ever seen, and somehow he was directly involved in that conflict. One wanted to capture him for some dark something or other, while the other one had risked her life to protect him. This much he knew. How could he possibly be that important? These two must have trained most of their lives to achieve such dazzling skill, and he was somehow the focus of their training? Eric just couldn’t accept that. It made no sense!
That reminded him of yet another painful reality. All those lives lost back in Bryer! Could that attack really have been over him? If he really believed that, he would have gladly offered himself to those things in the place of the hundreds of lives stolen. By the Gods, did Jacob get out alive? Did anyone? Is this really my fault? So many questions!
“All right, farm boy, let’s go,” Jade said as she gingerly got to her feet. “I don’t know if they are going to send anyone looking for her or not,” she gestured in the direction of Aena’s body, “but we need to put some miles between us and her,” she finished, once again not looking at Eric, only picking up the last of her items and placing them in saddlebags.
Then suddenly she whirled to face him. He jumped a little at the aggressive movement. Her blue eyes sparkled with the reflection of the sun. “I know you have questions. I’m sorry I got mad earlier. It’s just that—” her eyes went to the ground, filled with pain and regret. “My life was given to this purpose. I have been preparing for this for as long as I can remember, and in the grand scheme of things, my life is nothing compared to yours. Yet you’ve given up nothing! No sacrifices of any sort, as best I can tell. Part of what kept me going was knowing no matter how much I had given up—no matter how much blood, sweat and tears I had sacrificed—the Gate Keeper was working twice as hard!” Her voice went soft. “It seems nothing could be farther from the truth!” She looked as if she would cry.
“I don’t know what to—”