For the first time, I glanced around at where I was, because it was familiar. Though I’d given no thought to where I was going during my wandering, my feet had taken me in the direction of the Vigilant caves. I was close. I could feel it. I could see the mountain those caves were set in a short distance away.
It gave me a destination, even if I wasn’t sure what I’d do once I got there, or how it would help. Maybe it would give me something to live for, something to throw myself into so I could deal with my grief. If anything, at least I wouldn’t have to be alone. As weak as I was, I stood. I pushed myself to my feet and trudged past the wolf in the direction of the mountain. I walked, and the wolf walked, though I lost sight of it because it paced off ahead of me.
The mountain was farther than it looked, and my progress was slow because of how weak I was. It took me a better part of the day to reach it, and then I had to travel along the base of it in order to find the entrance to the caves. After a while, it felt like I’d never find it. I began to doubt myself and wonder if I was so tired that I was making the location up, if I was so desperate to find someone or something that I was imagining it.
I thought about giving in, but soon after I began to consider it, I saw the wolf in the distance, sitting on its haunches beside the mountain. I trudged to the animal, finally reaching the entrance—that wooden door set in the sheer rock. I slammed my fist against it once, not having the strength to knock any more than that, and the wolf ran back into the woods when I did. The single knock was all I needed. The door swung open, and Oren was the one who stood there.
“Kiena?” he said in shock. He motioned for me to come in, and then turned to the nearest man to shoo him away. “Go get them,” he told the man, “go.”
It was so warm in the caves compared to outside, and it was like being around other people for the first time in days reminded me of my nearing mortality. I’d hardly slept. I hadn’t eaten. I was broken and defeated and weak. I could barely stand, and Oren caught me by the waist when my knees gave out, aiding me to a nearby wooden box to sit on.
“Are you injured?” he asked in concern.
I hardly knew Oren, but I was too upset to care. I buried my face against his shoulder out of weakness and because my eyes were blurring all over again.
“It’s alright,” he said, and patted my arm to get me to straighten up. “Look.” I picked up my head to see what he wanted me to, and my heart sank.
“Kiena!” Nilson exclaimed, sprinting to me and throwing his arms around me. My mother was here too, and she left Kingston’s side to hurry over.
I couldn’t move. I was frozen in place as they hugged me, because all I could feel was the further shattering of my heart into a million abysmal pieces.
“Once you left,” Kingston said with a smile, “I figured they’d be safer here.”
It should’ve made me happy. It should’ve been a relief that they were alive and I should’ve been grateful for what Kingston had done. But I wasn’t. I broke down with an earthshattering sob, collapsing off the box and to the floor. I curled into a tight ball as I was filled with so much despair that I felt like a dagger had been plunged into my heart and twisted, and it kept twisting and twisting. All it meant that they were here, and alive, and safe… the only thing it meant that my mother and Nilson were fine was that leaving Ava had been the biggest mistake of my life. I’d betrayed her trust. I’d betrayed her love. And for nothing.
Part 2
The Dragon
Chapter 14
In my slumber, I was here again. In a world of black. There was nothing at first, not now or the last two nights I’d had these dreams. I simply hit the dark ground, unable to see or feel anything but what was under me. Then, like the last two nights, the only thing in this darkness was a voice, smooth and low and smoky. A whisper. Go to her. I sat up, searching the darkness for the source. And again, louder than last time, more urgent: GO TO HER. I began to push up, but it wasn’t quick enough. GO! I struggled blindly to my feet, prepared for what would come because the same thing happened the previous two nights. The moment I stood, the ground gave out beneath me. I fell one story, and no matter how hard I tried to stay on my feet, I crashed down onto a stone floor on my back.
It knocked the breath out of me. I sat up gasping, and even though I expected it, just like the nights before, it was a painful shock to see her. Ava. We were in the room at King Akhran’s castle, Ava seated at the edge of the dresser just inside the door. It seemed to startle her when I landed in the room, and we locked eyes as I sat up, and I stopped breathing. She stared, and I stared, with a growing agony in my chest that seemed to mirror in her as her blue eyes filled with tears.
But this dream was a nightmare, because this wasn’t the Ava I knew. She wasn’t full of life and joy. Her eyes were sunken with grief, as were her cheeks, and her collarbones. She was thin and pale, in a tattered dress, and she looked so weak that I feared she’d collapse. In this nightmare, everything seemed to scream at me that it was my fault she looked like this. My fault she was just a shell of what she used to be. Though she didn’t say it, surely she thought so too, because just like the last two nights, after that brief shock wore off, she stopped looking at me.
It had been too painful the last couple of dreams for me to speak. This time, however, as she pushed herself off the dresser and went to open the door, I rushed to stand before she could walk out. “Ava,” I pleaded. She froze, and this was so different from the last two nights that I didn’t know what to do. Once she walked out that door and I tried to follow, I’d wake up, and even though this was excruciating, I didn’t want the dream to end. I couldn’t find peace in my waking hours, but if I kept having these dreams, maybe I’d find some here. “Please,” I begged, my voice quivering, “please look at me.”
Her head turned the slightest bit like she might meet my gaze, but her eyes never made it past the floor. “You’re gone,” she whispered. And she walked out the door.
“Ava!” I called, pacing for the exit and intent on following her.
My eyes bolted open as I woke, and I sat up with a shout. It startled the small group of Vigilant rebels around me, including Nira. It had been five months that she’d been here. After I recovered enough from the loss of Ava and Albus to be able to speak, I’d told Kingston that he needed to get Nira and Akamar out of Ronan. I owed it to them, and to King Akhran and Queen Gwinn. Most of all, I owed it to Ava. It had taken a month, but eventually Sevedi managed to escape Ronan with the royal children.
When Nira first saw me, she’d been furious. She didn’t want to talk to me, hear of me, or even see me. All it had taken was a few weeks for her to calm down enough to understand and accept what had happened to her mother and father. Once she did, she’d come to me with a bow in her hand and two simple words: “teach me.”
Now she looked at me in my startled, upright position, and then glanced around at the early gray of the morning. “This is supposed to be a surprise attack,” she said, leaning back against the tree behind her and sticking her legs out to settle down again. “It won’t be if you’re shouting.”
I folded my knees up to my chest, rubbing my hands over my face to try and work off the tiredness. We were with our usual group of rebels, twenty miles from the Vigilant caves, preparing to cut off a supply convoy to Hazlitt in the south. If there was one thing Valens did better than Ronan, it was making weapons. We hadn’t the troops or the supplies to attack Hazlitt’s army yet, but by robbing his supplies, we were building our inventory and weakening his.