Stolen Dream

Chapter Fifteen

Javen had been working on digging a new opening in his home. He wanted a bedroom so he would feel his home was somewhat more private. He thought fondly of his parents' home and wondered how they were doing.

Better than him.

Javen was homesick. He wished he could recreate the beautiful landscape on his walls that his father had molded into the walls of the home he'd grown up in. It had been breathtaking.

Unfortunately, Javen wasn't blessed with his father's artistic abilities. He was more like Rave, able to do the basics, but only out of necessity.

He missed them. Especially Keyla, his little shadow. He could hardly remember a time growing up when she hadn't been there, dogging his every move, begging him to play with her, teach her something, show her how to do something she'd always wanted to learn, but was too little to safely do.

He'd taught her many things he probably shouldn't have.

Keyla had turned into quite the handful for Keyvon and Rave. The more she was taught, the more she figured out on her own. It was a dangerous, if beautiful, thing to watch.

A shift in the water around him had him frowning and turning around. "Wha—"

Chari smiled coldly at him. "I'm surprised that the next Sovereign would be so alone. I thought you'd have at least one guard at your door."

He straightened up from his work and brushed off his hands. "Few even know I'm here, less know who I am. How do you?"

"My son told me."

Javen frowned. "And that would be...?"

"Sanyo. The Sovereign. And you're not going to ruin everything by being next in line," she snarled and lunged at him.

Javen put up a fight, but his father had taught him to fight with a spear against a typical combatant. Chari was anything but typical. His every move was countered before he had time to complete it.

How was she so fast?

Chari folded her hands together and used her arms like a club, knocking the poor boy out. She hauled him up over her shoulder, grateful that he wasn't too bulky. It had taken a lot of time and effort to move Keenan after defeating and poisoning him several days before. It had been a true test of her strength and determination to drag him out into the middle of nowhere.

She mentally shrugged as she made her slow way home with her burden. She didn't have to hide anymore. Sanyo knew what she'd done now and she had been sentenced. There was no going back in time to change that, no need to hide her crimes any longer.

She could simply take the boy home, dose him with the same stuff that had killed his grandmother and be done with it. She chuckled at the thought of the grandson dying the same way as the grandma. Poetic justice, she thought, for standing in the way of her plans. She was the powerful one and her bloodline would rule the sea forever.

Chari dropped Javen off of her aching shoulder and dragged him the rest of the way to her home. She left him lying prone on the floor and began going through her supplies of extracts and ointments. She knew she still had some left...now, where was it?

Ah, there it was. She picked up the small flask of Oleander extract and returned to her victim. "I hate to do it, but you're standing in the way of my victory," she informed his unconscious form as she lifted him into her lap, cradling his head and forcing open his mouth before popping the lid off the poison vial.

"Stop."

She gasped and looked up. "You," she sneered. "You're too late. You'll never stop me in time. He has to die. He stole my dream," she accused angrily.