Songbreaker

Chapter 14: Done For

Tensions couldn't get any higher as trust has fallen through the floor between the trio and Thalleous finds himself saying things to Yvana that he would never have believed, himself. Achillean returns to camp with something that throws the spotlight back onto him and Yvana realises that it has all gone much too far

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Yvana stumbled her way back through the woods, watching her every step and periodically looking over her shoulders, paranoid that whoever had attacked her was not gone and was merely waiting for another opportunity to strike – this time with more lethality. She grunted through her injuries, still clutching at her front, feeling the pain in her ribs burning through her body. Her face still dripped with blood and her temples pounded from being slammed into the rock, but those were the least of her concerns – she needed to get back to camp and find Thalleous and Achillean. She wanted to tell them what had happened, but the words of the attacking Ardoni had stunned her to silence.

[Tell no one you saw me]

She had to tell someone, surely. She couldn't let this amount to the number of secrets she was already holding.

As she emerged from the woods, she saw that the camp they had made was empty and the fire had died down almost completely, only the low glow of smouldering ashes remained in its place, the wood having been burnt to rubble. There was no sign of neither Achillean nor Thalleous, yet there were no signs of struggle – there had not been a fight. Yvana dropped her axe on the ground beside the trunk that she last saw Achillean laid by, and she began searching around the fire for clues as to where the other two had gone.

Perhaps they had ditched her to further hide their secrets.

"What happened to you?" Thalleous asked, emerging from the shadows after a while. He had caught sight of Yvana's bloodied face and shocked her upright and nervous. She stumbled on her speech, trying to find an answer for him, her attacker's words still swirling around her head.

"Uh... Some wolves jumped me...in the woods..." She wasn't fooling herself, less so the Sendaris champion. As he holstered his sword on his back and cocked her head at her suspiciously, Yvana decided a change of subject was needed. "I should ask you the same question..." She narrowed her eyes at him carefully and he frowned at being questioned.

"When you did not return with the firewood that you claimed to be retrieving, I had to go out and find some, myself," he lied. Yvana wasn't buying that one bit.

"And yet, you have not returned with any..." she smirked from underneath her bruised face and she could have sworn that Thalleous had growled at her intimidation. He looked around for a moment and changed the subject yet again.

"What did you do to Achillean?"

"Excuse me?

"He began walking in your direction shortly after you, mumbling some nonsense. I figured he was going to teach you a lesson for what you did to him yesterday, yet he has not returned, and you have, with blood on your face. What did you do to him, Yva?"

Yvana stepped back, scandalised by Thalleous' accusation, but she also knew that she had no defense to save herself. She could only argue.

"Bold of you to assume I did anything to him, Thal! Oh, I don't know, maybe I tied him up and left him to the fucking wolves that I already told you are the reasons for the blood on my face! I can't believe you would even think that! I haven't seen him, Thal!"

"That would be something you would do..."

Yvana scoffed, infuriated that Thalleous had thought so little of her, even after everything he knew she had gone through, even after everything he had done for her – he was the reason that she was everything that she was, and there he stood, accusing her of stooping so low as to attack, and maybe kill, someone that they both knew was not worth the effort.