by Kelly Napoli
CHAPTER 27
UNEXPECTED
Kiethara opened her eyes.
Sunlight temporarily blinded her as it streamed in through the two windows on either side of her. She yawned and stretched, lavishing in a deep, steady breath. She could finally breathe again and she loved the feeling. They had arrived home late last night, after having what she considered being one of the most memorable evenings she had ever experienced, laughing to the point of tears with Navadar, Mallkin, and Randall. She couldn’t remember a time where she had laughed so much and so hard in her life.
Kiethara vaguely remembered Tina undressing her before she had collapsed onto the bed, falling to sleep before her head had hit the plush pillow. Now instead she wore a silk nightgown, the material caressing her skin in the coolest of touches. It was as soft and as smooth the surface of a calm lake.
With a sigh she pulled herself up into a sitting position. She didn’t really want to get up. Was anyone expecting her, anyway? Nobody would miss her in the slightest if she slept for a few more hours…
Her murky thoughts finally gave way to what was expected of her today.
Navadar was bringing her back to the forest! She was going home. After what felt like weeks of torture, innumerable physical and mental blows, and an adventure of a life time that she had no desire to repeat, it was finally time to end the journey and begin a new one. She had gotten her wish granted, a bit darkly, but it was done. She had gotten to see and experience the kingdoms. Many things had a new meaning to her now. Everything these past several days had been far too real. It was not like the forest. In the forest, there was a peace that could not be found here, a sense of timelessness that melted some of the days away into nothing. The days here had crawled by with no end, dragging her lower and lower into what had seemed, at first, a hopeless situation. How it had all started, what she had gone through, and how it was ending now was so…
Unexpected.
A perfect way to describe it, if anything. Goodness, she could not wait to tell Aaron everything that had happened. She had so many questions bouncing around in her head and she knew with all her heart that Aaron would have the answers ready for her. How would he explain it? What would his reaction be? She couldn’t imagine how he would act when she finally arrived home. Nothing this exciting had ever happened to her before. Nothing this terrifying had ever threatened the forest so badly. This was the first time he had not been there for her; the first time she could not feel his presence. She craved for it.
The sooner she would get up, the sooner this would all be underway.
She made her way over to the desk, where her garments were folded up neatly. She was so grateful to change back into her old, familiar clothes. She refused to wear that corset and gown ever again. It was nice and it was pretty, but she needed real clothes on her back.
As she got dressed, she let her mind daydream about the events to follow. For one, she would be alone with Navadar for hours on end. They probably would not reach the forest until tomorrow; the thought of being alone with him for that long made her stomach turn. More importantly, there would be no one else to watch.
And after everything that Navadar had done for her, there was no possible way Aaron could treat him with any type of regret. Navadar had saved her life for the second time now. There was no possible way that her boy had not earned himself some merit.
It seemed that, after everything that had happened, the pieces were finally starting to come together.
Of course, she did not forget the nightmare that still lurked in the shadows. Gandador was still there, ever present in her life, watching and waiting for his perfect moment to strike. Or maybe he had attached already, and the only thing she would be returning to was a charred remain of what she was worth.
With a small shake of her head, Kiethara combed her fingers through her hair and exited, for the last time, her room in Redawn.
She had made her way down the staircase and was about to turn into the dining room when she heard them. Navadar and Trinnia’s voices were barely audible. Instead of going in to the dining room door, she continued slowly down the hallway until she reached a door that had been left only slightly ajar, leaving only a crack between itself and the door frame.
“I’m taking her back today. Why?” Navadar’s voice asked.
“Curiosity. We cannot deny the stir her presence has been causing…” Trinnia said.
“Oh?”
“Rumors, you know. Nothing nice, either. Navadar, is it true she punched someone?” Trinnia’s voice sounded eager, not at all concerned for Kiethara’s well-being.
Navadar remained silent.
“Really, Navadar, we both know—”
“I’ll take care of it, all right?” His voice sounded impatient. “Don’t worry about it, please.”
“Oh, I won’t,” she replied, her voice almost a purr. Kiethara felt her stomach drop, for some reason.
“I won’t be long,” Navadar promised. “A few days, at the most.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Kiethara couldn’t take it anymore.
She opened the door soundlessly. Navadar’s back was to her, but Trinnia was facing her. Trinnia’s eyes flickered up…or had that been her imagination? When Kiethara looked harder, Trinnia was focused solely on Navadar, and not the door.
“Well, Trinnia—”
Trinnia leaned forward and kissed him.
Ba-Dump.
Had time slowed down? Had she always been able to hear her own heartbeat? It seemed each beat lasted an eternity, as if everything around her had frozen.
Everything besides her heart.
Oh, no, her heart refused to stop. Her thoughts were frozen, her breathing stilled, and the picture in front of her seemed permanently burned into her unblinking eyes…yet her heart did not freeze. It raced ahead of it all, feeling the emotions her brain hadn’t yet registered.
Ba-Dump.
See, her heart had already found what was lying there. What the future held for her now. Her heart had already embraced it, as though it were surrendering respectfully to some stronger foe. On the other hand, every other inch of her being was still lost in the image before her eyes. It was avoiding what it would eventually have to find; a wasted effort.
Ba-Dump.
Because Kiethara knew what her heart knew. She knew what everything else was cringing away from. Everything else, unfortunately, cowered away from the prospect of pain. But her heart, by itself, was accepting the inevitable.
Now it was time to move.
Ba-Dump.
How much time had passed? Four, five seconds? That was how long it took her body to catch up with her heart, which was still racing ahead.
Kiethara gasped in the doorway; her navy blue eyes wide and her mouth opened in a shocked O.
Navadar let out a muffled cry of surprise and pushed Trinnia away. He turned towards Kiethara, his forest green eyes no longer sparkling, but wide with shock and horror. It was as though he couldn’t believe that she was there!
Kiethara twitched her finger, tensed her knees, ready to find an escape. She always had before.
“Kiethara!” Navadar gasped. He opened his mouth again.
But she was already out the door.
Her bare feet hardly made any noise at all as they sprinted down the hall, around the stairs, and through the front door. She heard noises behind her, but she tuned it out along with the rest of the babble issuing from the streets, from the kingdom. She paused on the porch for only a heartbeat, and then took off towards the sea to her right.
She saw the expressions of outrage the crowds shot at her as she ran by, but she did not hear their cried of irritation. She was too focused on pushing her feet off the cobblestone as hard as she could towards the glistening sea, which had never seemed this far away before. The people were thick, and she felt like she was hardly making progress as she skirted around women, children, and venders.
It took what seemed to be a million heartbeats until she finally re
ached the docks, which were not nearly as crowded as the streets were.
She took off.
Her feet pounded against the smooth wood as she ran along them, not out to sea, but to the north. She was going so fast that for a moment, just a moment, she thought she was flying again. But that fantasy was gone as soon as her feet made contact with the ground again.
Ba-Dump.
Running was mind-numbing. Everything in her vision slowed, her world still seemed to be on mute and not a single thought but “escape” crossed her mind. She ran on, straight through a flock of seagulls that were lounging on the sunny dock. They scattered all around her with cries she could not hear. Her eyes watered as the wind whipped her in the face, pulling her hair back with its strong fingers. The air in the kingdoms was so thick that her lungs were soon burning with a fire she had never felt before. With a little more focus, she pushed herself past the pain, saving it for later…
Her focus was not on the sounds or the sights surrounding her, but on the pursuit of an escape, so she couldn’t stop herself from running straight into Mallkin.
Kiethara did not just bump into him like some strange looking the wrong way as he crossed a busy pathway. She smacked into his chest at full speed, almost ricocheting herself off of him, but his hands instinctively shot forward and grabbed her.
Of course it was Mallkin. Everyone else so far had given her a wide berth, keeping their distance, unable to judge how much of a freak she truly was. He and his blond head had looked up at the last moment, recognized her, and hadn’t really bothered to move. She had seen all this, but she had been working too hard on avoiding the motions of the world to maneuver her way around it.
Ba-Dump.
As soon as she hit him, everything came rushing back to her in one overpowering wave, as though she had been underwater and had just broke the surface. Her chest hurt, inside and out.
She inhaled sharply, eyes wide, as her mind and body sluggishly caught up with the rapid succession of events that was taking place. No surprise, her heart was still miles ahead of everything else, feeling aches that Kiethara had wanted to numb for as long a time as she could have.
“Kiethara!” Mallkin cried out in surprise. “What the…”
“Mallkin!” she wheezed, every breath burning. “I—”
“Here, calm down,” he said with a laugh, straightening her up. “Playing hide-and-seek with Navadar? Because I have an excellent spot…”
Hide-and-seek? What in the world was he talking about?
“Mallkin,” she gasped sharply. “I need to go.”
Mallkin finally seemed to grasp the situation. His dark eyes lit up again and he scanned her face with a new, serious intensity that she didn’t think he was capable of.
“What’s wrong, princess?”
“Have to”—gasp—“go.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“I don’t have time,” she huffed, looking him straight in the eye. “I need to go!”
Ba-Dump.
He finally seemed to receive the message that she did not have the breath to speak. She had to go, to move, to escape before something she did not want to consider happened…
Then she heard Navadar.
He was yelling her name; she flinched in response to his voice. A quick glance over her shoulder told her everything she needed to know. He was still a ways back, trying to push through the sea of people, but apparently, he was still too self-conscious to barrel through them as she had.
Kiethara struggled to free herself from Mallkin’s grip, but he took hold of her wrists tightly. Why was he doing this?
“Let me go!” she cried, twisting her wrists.
“I will,” he said in a tone that made her freeze. “As long as you promise me this: Turn left at the crossing over there and go straight until you spot a small, blue tent. Go in there and tell the man you are just looking and wait for me there until I catch up with you. When I get there, you must tell me what happened. I’ll hold Navadar up in the meantime. Understand?”
She nodded.
Ba-Dump.
She wretched her hands from him and dashed towards the crossing he had pointed out and turned left. She saw the tent he had been describing, a small, discrete thing that was selling ribbon. She saw it, and then she ran right past it.
She felt no remorse for lying to Mallkin. She did not feel bad as she imagined him standing in the tent, alone, wondering what had happened to her. He was such a free-spirited boy; she would not let his life become entangled with her own like Navadar’s was. No, she did not want anything to do with these people anymore.
Logically, it was the right thing to do, anyway. Well, no, she couldn’t justify it like that. What was she doing? Running away. Was running away her most sensible option? What if she had stayed, what if she had listened to his pathetic explanation? Did she really want to be lied to even further, though?
Her thoughts were spiraling in senseless directions. She needed to listen to something other than her mind.
Like her heart.
Ba-Dump.
Her heart only told her two words. It spoke them blunt and outright; it held nothing back. It was not afraid of hurting itself or anyone around it. The knife it held was not used for self-defense, but more on the lines of self-sacrifice. Perhaps more on the lines of suicide, she thought to herself, but maybe that was a little dramatic. But was the selfless nobility her heart was embracing really any better? As though it was so perfect and so brave for telling her what she didn’t want to know! No matter what either of them labeled it, the message was still clear, spoken to the rhythm of each frantic beat:
It’s over.
“It” stood for everything. “It” stood for the close relationship she had with Navadar. Every kiss and every touch, which had once stood as promises, now were only there as blurry memories. Painful reminders of how she had let him take advantage of her naïve nature and clueless position in this world. He was a double-faced, hypocritical traitor, but for some reason, Kiethara could not summon up the reasonable anger to really blame him. Really, how could she blame him when he had all this, and she had nothing?
“It” stood for the connection she had had with the world outside the forest. She would no longer here any news or information about the kingdoms, no longer listen to old legends of their past. She no longer had a friend, only a mentor and a dozen enemies. The next time this happened, the next time she was beaten and dragged through the dirt, there would be no one to save her. The reality of that sent her into an even deeper depression.
“It” stood for the hope that his presence had given her. Gandador and Navadar had entered her life nearly at the same time. She had never experienced one without the other. She would not have minded if she had only been left with Navadar, not at all! But, as her luck always dictated, the situation was reversed, and it was not nearly as sweet. Her only visitor would be Gandador, her only friend her foe. That, too, sent chills of despair coursing through every inch of her body. Everywhere, that is, except for her heart.
Ba-Dump.
Kiethara could hardly keep this running up. Every other step she took had her tripping over her feet. She felt as though there was a knife shoved between her ribs, as though her lungs had stopped working a long time ago. People yelled at her, children pointed, and barrels were quickly pulled out of her way before she could spill their continents.
But of course, her heart was not tired, even though, at the rate it was beating, she figured it was about to explode. Despite this, it wasn’t ready to stop yet, and it urged her on as though it controlled her. None of her other muscles could work as well.
Kiethara had to stop! Her vision was blurred; she could hardly see the deserted alleyway before her. She brought her hands up to her face and found tears.
Ba-Dump.
These were her heart’s tears. These were her tears. It made her realize, finally, that her heart and she were the same person, even though they held such different things. But the stre
ngth in her heart was her strength, and the power in her body was the power in her heart. As her tears proved, though, it was so much more than that.
It was her weakness. Just like it had been her mother’s weakness. Maybe it really was a curse, to have a heart. It had certainly been her mother’s downfall.
Her heart remained to beat inside her breast, reminding her of its presence, of the destruction it could wrought. It would only stop when she did. They could only be silenced together.
Ba-Dump.
