Chapter 9 – Who’s the Predator and Who’s the Prey?
“She’s burning up,” Olivia said, taking her hand away from Remi’s forehead. “And I’m not surprised, considering the strain her body’s been in.”
“Maybe your hand’s just hot,” Remi said, batting her away. “Stop worrying about me.”
“Would your rather we leave you behind?”
“Yes!” she shouted. “For the thousandth time, YES!”
“No one’s going to do that,” Kace replied, glancing around the forest they traveled through. The canopy of the trees were so high up in the air that it was as if they made up the sky, turning it from a baby blue to a hazy green. “You know the Quietus used to live around here? At least that’s what my parents told me. There was—”
“—I don’t want to see you like this,” Olivia said to Remi.
Remi shook her head. “Then maybe I’ll go off on my own!” she shouted.
“You can’t be serious,” Olivia said. Remi faced her, fevered face and all.
“Don’t come for me for at least an hour. You’ll see. I can handle myself.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Kace began but Olivia grabbed his arm.
“No, let her prove herself.”
“Stay away, Kace,” Remi demanded as she stumbled on. She was tired of it all. The pity. The coddling. Most of all, her body. She had done so much training and yet, it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t used to walking for most of the day and barely sleeping most of the night. She had worked extensively on her combat skills but none of it prepared her for a punch to the face. The bruises were swelling and taking way too long to heal. But she fought against the pain. Her willpower was working past its limits, struggling every moment to keep one foot in front of the other, but that was all she needed to keep going. Just one foot. Then the next. One foot. Then the next.
Remi took a deep breath and tried to remove her friends from the equation. If she truly wanted to know what it felt like to be alone, then that meant she had to be alert, and be aware of the hidden dangers. She couldn’t just stumble along knowing that her friends could intervene on her behalf if she got into trouble.
Remi thought about taking out her eidolon to assess her surroundings, but she decided to preserve her energy. Instead, she just kept her focus as sharp as possible. And instead of dwelling on the pain coming from within, she distracted her mind with what was on the outside.
It had been over a year since she had seen the lights of Paragon across the night sky, and now she yearned for them more than ever, even if the sun had just come up a few short hours ago.
She turned her attention to the birds tweeting in the trees, the rustle of the grass in the breeze and the warmth on her face. Spring was upon them all, and she hoped a new transformation within her would come with it. At the very least, she wouldn’t have to fight the cold anymore.
She looked behind her and saw that no one was following.
That was okay.
It would have made her sadder if she saw them running at her frantically, yelling about how she was going to hurt herself. That would have been worse. That would have spoken volumes of how weak they saw her.
But then again, perhaps their absence said something troubling as well.
That she was better off gone.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and continued walking on, trying her best to remove them from the recesses of their mind.
Better off gone.
It sounded horrible, but at the same time, it was all the more reason to prove just how powerful she could be. How the girl that had looked in the mirror and saw a warrior before her didn’t change. She would show them the truth.
Now she just had to figure out how to do it.
The Sorcerer's Ring (Book #1 of the Seven Sorcerers Saga) Page 13
