Great post Liri! 
I saw the way Lyren watched Finn leave the room with Nikko, clearly hating to leave him alone so soon after he woke.
“He’ll be alright, Nikko’s got him,” I whispered, and she nodded, taking a deep breath.
“Let’s go, we have a long way to go.” Lyren stated, picking up her bag. We headed to the stables and found that they had already gotten two horses ready for us. We thanked the Clann members, and rode off in silence.
I could feel her watching me out of the corner of her eye, hoping I’d say something. We have barely spoken since she had heard my mental call for help and came with the team to rescue us. Not through the entire time spent at my father’s home, or the entire ride back to Clann… not when we got back either, and then Finn woke, and now here we are, riding in awkward silence.
I remembered the relief on her face when she had found us, just when we had needed her most. Like a vision out of a fantasy, fierce and blindingly beautiful. And in return, I had shut her out, despite how I had coaxed her out from the shadows of her own doubts, once. Yet she had reached out to steady my hands, and tried to just be a supportive presence, not asking questions. All she had were the stories told about my father while in the Dai Li, and I knew she had to be burning with questions.
There had been that moment, getting out of the carriage, when she had told me that she would be here whenever I was ready, and I had almost cracked. The walls I’d built to keep the world out felt hollow, fragile, about to topple with the slightest push. But I simply couldn’t find the words.
I still couldn’t.
To this moment I was still shutting her out, whether through shields and silence or through shields and jokes. I could tell she’d almost spoken up several times, but just fell silent again instead, not knowing what to say.
The silence dragged on.
I tried to focus on the path we were taking, and on remaining vigilant for any Dai Li. The whole day passed this way, with us traveling at a fast but sustainable speed, only stopping to rest when the horses needed food and water. We ate in the saddle, and when we did stop to take care of the horses, we only spoke a little of commonplace things, then continued the ride in silence again.
When the sun was growing lower in the sky, Lyren finally spoke.
“We should probably make camp for the night.”
“Good idea. Know any good spots nearby?” I replied, relieved to finally break the silence. Lyren thought for a moment, then nodded and started leading us off the path towards a secluded grove with a cave.
“We can light a small fire, we should be far enough from anyone else. I can’t sense anyone close by.” She stated, dismounting and tying up her horse before taking off its tack and rubbing it down. I did the same, then gathered firewood while Lyren fed the horses and set up our bedrolls in the cave. I arranged the wood just outside of the cave, then lit the fire, and we both pulled out the food we had brought with us, sitting down to eat by the fire.
I watched the sun slip below the horizon while I ate, very conscious of Lyren sitting nearby and how we still had barely spoken since that night.
“Sooo…..” she finally said, then trailed off again. “Nyna packed these in our bags. Not sure what to do with them though.” She finally stated, pulling out a packet of delicious goodness.
“What?!” I exclaimed, taking the packet from her, “You’ve never had a s’more before?!” I gasped dramatically, putting a hand to my chest and feigning being scandalized.
“Um. No. What’s a s’more?” Lyren asked, in a quiet voice, looking awkward.
“Wait, you’re serious. You’ve really never had a s’more before?!” I cried out, with genuine horror now. She shrugged her shoulders helplessly.
“I didn’t exactly have a normal childhood…” she trailed off.
“Well! Time to fix your lack of s’more knowledge! You came to the right guy for the job, I just so happen to be a S’more Expert!”
In no time, the two of us were holding a pair of sticks over the fire, with fat marshmallows skewered on the ends.
“The trick,” I told her, putting on my best “wise old scholar” voice. “Is to hold the marshmallow over the fire, at just the right angle, and turn it slowly, but not too slowly, until it has been browned on all sides. The trick is in the timing. Not long enough over the fire, and it won’t reach the optimal gooey texture to hold your s’more together. Too long, and it will get burnt.”
“Like this – oh!” Lyren exclaimed as her marshmallow abruptly caught fire. She yanked back the stick, but it was too late. The blackened marshmallow fell into the flames.
“Do not fret, my dear disciple. It takes many campfire trips and the sacrifice of countless marshmallows to properly learn the art of making a perfect s’more”, I said solemnly. We both glanced at each other, then burst out laughing. After all the stress and heart-pounding escape of the days prior, it felt good to laugh like this.
I gave her one of my already-toasted marshmallows, and we stuck them between slices of chocolate and layers of graham crackers. Lyren closed her eyes as she bit into hers, savoring the delectable sweetness.
“I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on these my whole life,” Lyren turned and grinned at me. “Don’t hold out on me now – what other sweets do you know how to make?”
I laughed and leaned back. “I’m afraid that the making of s’mores is the only culinary art I’ve mastered thus far. But when we get back, I’ll have the Clann chefs introduce you to a whole new world of mouthwatering pleasures.” My smile faded a bit as I added, more softly. “Lucien taught me how to roast marshmallows, when I was five.”
There was silence for a bit, and I was afraid that we were going to slip back into that awful tension from the ride here again. I was about to open my mouth, searching for something to say, when Lyren spoke up.
“I’m sure Skyf would have loved them,” she said wi****lly. “He always did have a major sweet tooth.”
The mention of her brother broke the dam between us. I looked into her eyes, and there was no going back now. She had shared with me the deepest, most vulnerable parts of herself, laying it bare between us with such bravery. Now, it was my turn, and I chose at last to put my faith in the soft, fragile thing that had blossomed between us.
“What was your brother like?” Lyren asked softly.
“He was my light,” I said simply. “All of ours, actually. He was like the sun – warm and gentle one moment, blazing with passion the next. Everyone seemed to gravitate towards him, whether it was our father’s household and fellow Dai Li, or those at the Clann.”
I could have lowered my shields, let her see the thoughts that had been choking me for so long. But it didn’t feel right, somehow. I let her in just enough to see the images behind the words. But the words themselves, I had to say out loud. They were a confession.
Mea culpa. My cross to bear.
“My better half.” I smiled. “He was the one who always spoke up for what was right, and was never afraid to take a stand. He’d move heaven and earth to protect the things that were important to him, take on the whole world if that’s what it took. That’s why it – why it hurt so much that he didn’t want to punish Father for what he did.” I sighed. “But in the end, he was right, of course. Because really, there’s no pursuit as hollow and worthless as revenge.”
Lyren put a hand over mine as she watched me struggle to find the right words. “It’s alright,” she said gently. “I do want to know the truth, but I can wait until you’re ready. Just know that I’m here.”
“I’m sorry,” I offered her a small smile. “You deserve to know. It’s just – I’ve never spoken any of this out loud before. The others had already known.”
I took a deep breath. “Most of the rumors surrounding what my father did are true. He wasn’t – he wasn’t always like that, so ruthless and calculating. I remember him being a kind father, when we were children.” I smiled a bit wi****lly. “We had been a happy family, once.”
“Ansell!” Lucien called out in exasperation. “Where did you go?”
“Boo!” I stuck my head out of the thick branches of the oak tree in our back yard, grinning as my brother jumped backwards, startled. I hung upside down from the thickest branch, hanging on by my legs as I stuck my tongue out at him.
Luc rolled his eyes good-naturedly at my antics. I’d been six years old, Lucien ten, and our father had just been invited to dine with the King at his palace for the first time. It was a great honor, and we had been preparing for weeks. And by preparing, I meant attending the most boring of lessons involving palace decorum, the proper way to walk, talk, and address the nobility, not to mention – I shuddered just thinking about it – dance practice.
I heard Dad’s booming laugh as he pushed his way past the willow boughs hanging over the small pond on our estate. “You got your brother well and good, didn’t you, my little monkey?”
“Oh dear.” Luc pulled me out of the tree and pinned me to the grass, tickling me all over. I tried to wiggle out of his grasp, squealing. “What have we here? A spy, hiding in the trees?” he teased. “You’ll get no mercy from me!”
I rolled away, tossing a handful of grass and dandelions at my older brother. “You just wait! When I grow up, I’m going to be the bestest spy ever, and you’ll never be able to catch me!”
Lucien laughed. “Now that, I would love to see.”
“What is going on over here?” Mom strode over to us across the lawn, the train of her elegant gown trailing over the grass. She put her hands on her hips, looking over each of us in turn. “We have less than three hours to get dressed, and look at all of you! Ansell, you’ve got dirt and grass stains all over your clothes, and Lucien, are those twigs in your hair? Maxime, you had better not be encouraging this!”
Dad laughed. “Oh, let them have a little fun, Amélie. They’re going to be stuck at the royal court for the whole evening, and we know how stuffy and boring that place is.”
Mom rolled her eyes at him, but the corners of her lips were turned upwards in a smile. “Is that how the illustrious Lord Gervais speaks about his king’s palace?” she scolded. “Someday, Lucien will inherit the title and your place on the council. Isn’t it about time you start setting a good example?”
“Hmm… you’re right, of course, darling. I should not be encouraging their lack of decorum.” Dad hung his head as if chastened, but when Mom turned her back, he winked at us. “I heard that the first opportunity where you can politely excuse yourselves is after the third course,” he said to us in an exaggerated stage whisper. “Then you can escape out to the gardens until dessert is served!”
“Oh, honestly!” Mom threw up her hands at all of us as Lucien and I dissolved into giggles.
“But constantly being around the Dai Li changed him,” I continued. “It was a mess of political machinations and backstabbing, with the various lords and ladies in constant struggle for the barest scraps of power. To stay alive and keep his position, Father had to be wary of everyone and everything around him. It made him… harder, more paranoid, and more desperate. With each passing year, holding onto power became more difficult, as our family was small and had few allies. As such, Father had to become ever more ruthless to keep in the King’s good graces.”
Lucien and I peered through the crack in the door, watching as Dad paced back and forth, restlessly. Mom watched him, intent and filled with some emotion we could not understand.
“I don’t have a choice,” Dad muttered, hands pulling at his hair. “I didn’t! If the King had found out – if – “ he broke off.
“He was a good friend to us,” Mom murmured, and her voice was so strained. Was it anger? Resentment? Guilt, or regret?
“I know!” Dad threw his hands in the air. “But as soon as he told me he was a Gifted sympathizer, I knew I had to tell the King. If he thought we might turn against him, betray him… You know how His Majesty feels about those abominations, Amélie. Our family would have been ruined.”
“And instead, Elias’s family was,” Mom’s voice was almost accusing. She stood to face him. “You could have at least tried to reason with His Majesty, asked for a lighter sentence! Whatever Elias believed in, he was always loyal to the King. And his family was innocent.”
“I wanted to! Of course I wanted to!” Dad said, his voice breaking. He buried his face in his hands. “If only I had the power to sway him… but the dukes who wanted Elias gone held too much sway at Court. If I’d spoken out, they would have turned against me, too.”
Mom’s face softened. She walked over and put an arm around him. “I know it’s difficult,” she whispered. “But surely… surely there’s a better way than simply giving in to all their cruel desires?”
“I need to do this to keep us all safe, Amélie,” Dad whispered. He clenched his fists. “I’m sorry. I know it isn’t right. But I must do what I have to, to keep my place at Court secure.”
Mom watched him with an expression of unbearable sadness. “I understand you have to make hard decisions, Maxime. But please… please don’t forget who you are. Don’t ever lose sight of the man I fell in love with.”
“When my sister was born, we were happy, at first,” I said. “But… it didn’t take us long to realize she had Gifts. They can manifest at any point in life, and for my sister, it came when she was only six months old. Some burglars broke into our house and tried to kidnap her. She managed to escape their grasp by… floating away. As you can imagine, my father was horrified. He tried to hide the truth of her abilities, at first. But once a Gifted has manifested powers, they cannot be hidden for long, especially for a baby with no control. Soon, the King came to take her away, and along with Meira, he demanded that my mother be punished for giving birth to a Gifted.” I showed her the memory of our desperate flight from my father’s manor in the middle of the night.
“I wasn’t there when the Dai Li dragged Mom, with Meira still in her arms, in front of Adonis for her trial. I was still too young to be present at Court, which is why you didn’t know of me. From what I heard from the Dai Li, Father didn’t speak of us much after we left. But later, I got Lucien to tell me what had happened that day.”
“Take the child away,” King Adonis said coldly, his eyes glinting with malice. “There is no place for such an abomination in our world, except to be beaten down until they are no more than a tool of my empire. Otherwise, their evil would run rampant.”
“Please… please, Your Majesty,” Mom whispered, on her knees. Tears streamed down her face. “She’s just a baby. At least, allow me to raise her into adulthood. I swear I’ll keep her Gifts from causing any trouble.”
“Silence!” The King snarled. “This is on you, too, for clearly your blood is tainted. Otherwise, how could a member of my own council have sired such an offspring?”
Dad started forward. “Your Majesty, please, my wife – “
King Adonis turned on him. “Will you join her in this treachery then, Lord Gervais?” He sneered. “It is time you chose where your loyalties lie – take the side of your wife, who has brought such filth into the world, or uphold your fealty to your king and country.”
Dad hesitated. But then, his face seemed to harden, his eyes turning to steel. “My loyalty, Your Majesty, is to you and to Alagaesia. That will never change.”
“Maxime…” Mom whispered, her voice breaking.
“Renounce your wife, then,” the King demanded with a slow, deliberate cruelness.
Again, Dad had hesitated for a moment. “What about my children?”
“They may stay at your side, so long as they pledge to renounce her and this child, as well,” the King smiled in satisfaction. “I am merciful, am I not?”
“Never!” Lucien cried out, running forward towards our mother. “Mom – “
“Stop him,” Father commanded to his soldiers. They grabbed Luc and prevented him from reaching her.
“Please, Father, you can’t do this,” Lucien gasped, before one of the guards put a hand over his mouth.
Adonis looked at him disapprovingly. “Will you be able to keep that one in check?”
“He’s still young, and he will learn,” Father said, then turned to Mom, who was still weeping, looking to him imploringly. “And you. From this day forth, you are no wife of mine. You may return to the manor to gather your things, but after tonight, never again will you step foot on my lands.”
He swept out of the room, his personal guards in tow, one of them dragging away Lucien, who was struggling hard, still reaching for Mom. She followed at the end of the procession, under heavy guard, her hair a wild, tangled mess around her tear-streaked face. Meira had already been torn from her arms and given to a high-ranking Dai Li member, a man whose entire body was hidden beneath a dark, hooded cloak. All that could be seen of his face was a pale, pointed chin and slow, cruel smile.
And that was the last anyone had ever seen of our baby sister.
I was shaking with fury when Lucien had, at last, told me all that had transpired that last, terrible day. “Doesn’t that make you angry?” I snarled. “That man – he’s no father of ours. He chose his own greed and desire for power over us! He saw what the King was, the monster who was ruling over our country, and he sided with him! He turned his back on Meira, and threw out Mom like she was a piece of trash!”
“Of course it makes me angry,” Lucien whispered. I looked at him. It was the first time I had seen my brother shaking like that, with a barely suppressed, helpless fury. “But if I know Father, he’s going to regret this for the rest of his life. He won’t be able to enjoy his precariously held-onto power with the weight of what he’s done hanging over him.”
I clenched my fists. “That’s not good enough.”
“I wanted my father to pay for what he’d done,” I said out loud to Lyren now. “I was young back then, and foolish, and all I could see was that man, enjoying his life of luxury while we starved on the streets. No one would take us in, offer us shelter, for to associate with Mom was disgrace in the eyes of the King. But I kept it to myself, at first, because I could see how much our anger was hurting Mom. She still loved him, despite everything… and she never truly recovered from his betrayal. A few months after we were banished from the Capitol, she got sick.”
She grew paler, and weaker, as the winter months drew by. We tried everything, spending what few coins we could save up on herbs, apothecaries, anyone who would answer our begs for help. Even the ones kind enough to offer aid avoided looking us in the face, and were in a hurry for us to leave their shops.
Until one day, Lucien returned to the dingy alleyway where Mom and I were huddled, pressed together for warmth. For the first time in months, he was smiling.
“I found a place where we can go,” he said excitedly. “There’s been a group of people who have been fighting the Dai Li, trying to save as many Gifted children as they can. They call themselves the Clann – and they’ve agreed to take us in.”
Mom smiled, squeezing both our hands. I barely felt it, that was how feeble her grasp was then. “Good,” she murmured. The hollows of her face stood out starkly. She was so thin and ragged then, all skin and bones. “I’m glad… you two will have a place to go. Now I can finally go… in peace.”
The next morning, when we woke up, she was gone.
“After we were banished, Lucien became obsessed with finding out as much as he could about the Gifted,” I said. “He discovered what you did – that they weren’t monsters or demons at all, but children like any other. It seemed to light a fire in him – he wanted to do all he could to save them, pull them from the ruthless grasp of the Dai Li… help them like he couldn’t help Meira. Like he couldn’t help Mom.” I smiled sadly. “So finding out about the Clann was like a new awakening for him. Finally, he had purpose again, a way forward past the shadow of this grief. I, on the other hand… I wasn’t so good at moving on. All I could see was the past, while my brother was looking towards a better future. For us and for all of Alagaesia. I’m sure that’s what Mom would have wanted… and Dad too. Or rather, the father that we’d once had.”
I sighed. This was the part that would be the hardest to tell. “So we parted ways,” I said bitterly. “The first in a long string of terrible choices, that I can never take back. I abandoned my brother, my only family, when he decided to join the Clann.”
I left in the middle of the night, so I didn’t have to say goodbye. I knew Lucien - he’d find a way to stop me, to convince me to stay. But the rage that had simmered in me for far too long had blazed into a raging inferno after Mom’s death.
Lucien,
You might be able to move on, but I can’t. I can’t live with myself, knowing he’s still out there, laughing and eating at the King’s table. Bowing and scraping at the feet of the man who destroyed our family.
I can’t get back at the King, but I can give the man we once called father what he deserves. I’m going to destroy him, Lucien. I’ll make sure he loses his lands, his influence, his precious place on the Council, the things that he decided were worth more than his own family.
Don’t come after me. You won’t change my mind.
After it’s done, after it’s all over, I’ll come find you.
Ansell
“So I joined a rebel gang,” I continued. “I watched as they took over the city’s underbelly, the dark corners and alleyways. I knew they weren’t good people, beating up and stealing from other poor and homeless people, terrorizing any who crossed into their territory. I didn’t join in their violent activities, but it’s not like I did anything to stop them. You see, in their spare time, these kids launched sabotage missions against the Dai Li and members of the King’s court. It started with little things, a rock through a window of a lavish estate, stealing the jewelry off some noblewoman. Then it turned into spy missions, intercepting important messages and relaying them to other rebels fighting against the King. Then sabotage of the Dai Li’s missions, and guerilla warfare. They worked with the Clann, sometimes, and many of them were Gifted who were angry and wanted to get back at the Dai Li. The difference was, they were far more willing to cross lines and use brutal force to get what they wanted. I would turn them in once they helped me bring down my father, I told myself. I thought it would be worth it. As long as they could help me get revenge.” I smiled bitterly. “In the end, it wasn’t worth it. In the end, I lost the only family member I had left… and, for a time, I lost myself.”
I glanced up then, seeing that the moon had reached its peak in the darkened sky. “It’s late. We should get to bed, we have to get up early if we want to catch the Noor scouting party. Let’s… let’s continue this another night.” I stood up, but before I could walk away to get our bedrolls, Lyren reach out and pulled me into a hug.
I let the warmth of her embrace wash over me, keeping at bay the chill of those long-buried memories. “I will tell you everything,” I whispered into her hair. “I promise.”
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