Limbo between Kings

Day 8 - The Author

They sat in silence, the body of her attacker hauled from her sight long ago. Neither Olivia nor Silas looked at the other but at the sun rising through the thick trees. Small intense spots of sunlight struck Olivia's eyes, forcing her to squeeze them shut. She never wanted to leave this comfortable silence or the feeling of safety that came along with it.

"If you were given the opportunity to take a horse and leave this very moment to your castle, would you take it?" Silas' sympathetic voice broke the lingering quiet. The blatant question coming as a bit of a shock.

"No." She answered honestly. She would die before she returned to Henry.

"You wanted to go home?" Silas propped himself on his elbow, glaring in her direction.

Olivia turned her eyes to the sky once more, unable to handle the intensity of his emerald stare. She couldn't explain how much she hated her brother to the very man who stole her away. It was a secret she held within herself, the burden of Henry's crimes. Of how he used her for his advantage, bargaining her body for the price of the lord's loyalty. Since the death of her grandfather, Olivia had never felt at home in Varella. She was a prisoner, bound by blood.

"Henry's castle isn't my home." Olivia could sense Silas' unmoving eyes on the side of her face, expecting more of an answer. One she could not give. Not now, not to him.

"Then where did you expect to go?"

What a loaded question that was to her, and an embarrassing one at that. But he had saved her life as well as her pride, and at the very least deserved to know where she had intended to go. A life in exchange for a question, it was only fair.

"A year ago I was gifted a novel for my name-day, I don't remember who wrote it exactly, but It was filled with adventures." She fingered the laces on her tunic, twirling them as she spoke. "The author spoke of a place, a waterfall somewhere at Varella's border, where the fish shimmered like stars under the night sky and wh-"

"When floating underwater it would be as if you were in the heavens?" He finished with a curt chuckle, "The book affected you that much? Enough to risk your life for it?"

She looked at him, truly looked at him. Seeing the ripples of his onyx hair pushed messily from his face, the scabbing slice decorating his cheek and brow. She followed the straight bridge of his nose to his supple pink lips that always found themselves in a smirk. Olivia had made many assumptions about him. A simple example was that he was an illiterate puppet, incapable of thinking for himself, let alone know the words from a lesser-known novel. Yet, with each assumption she would make, he would find a way to prove her wrong, almost as if he could read her mind. It was what she hated most about him, and admired at the same time.

In all honesty, the book had done more than affect her... it saved her. It pulled her into a world that wasn't her own to claim, ripping her from the reality her brother had set in motion.

Nodding her head, Olivia remembered the first time she had scanned the pages. Rain like any other day had pelted her windows, lightning, and thunder brightening the dreary sky. Henry was gone for the winter, galavanting with the other lords and the castle was absent from his incessant parties. For once Olivia had true peace, uninterrupted and silent. It had been the perfect day to crack open the new book gifted to her just weeks before.

Within minutes she had lost herself in the pages, skipping meals and refusing to sleep until she studied every last word decorating the parchment. Even after three days without rest, the following hours were spent scouring any map she could find, searching for waterfalls near the border, vowing to find this hidden gem.

"It changed my life." She admitted transparently.

"So you were going to try and find a place that you've never been, that isn't listed on any map, with mere...what...intuition? Luck?" He asked with amusement, pulling himself to stand, within two steps he was standing inches from her relaxed frame. She didn't want to move just yet, her body still ached from the assault.