Of Whispers and Daggers ✓ [TLRQ #2]

Chapter 4.3 - Aster

Dedicated to Dreamland Community for being a
wonderful place for any and all Wattpadders to belong <3

I nod and adjust my cloak. I already thought about how I was going to explain everything, but it still feels like being put on the spot.

"I'm sure you all received my note that a magic institution had sent me an invitation to come learn there. I made a stupid mistake in choosing to go without saying anything first."

Reyan snorts.

"When I arrived, they ambushed me, stole my weapons and casting materials, and threw me in a cell." Discomfort at speaking the memories steals over me, and my gaze shifts to the wall behind Sela. "They tried to get information from me. I didn't tell them anything. I couldn't have escaped on my own. One of the servant girls at the manor found me and ended up breaking me out and helping me recover."

Sela's frown is softer now, her expression simultaneously more compassionate and analytical. Reyan's face is hard-set, almost scowling. I look away from them again.

"My captor was Amarris Veradeaux, working in conjunction with a northern caster, a shaman."

Sela interrupts. "I thought Kadranians hated magic."

"As far as I know, they do. But they, and shamans themselves, supposedly argue that shaa isn't magic. We don't know how it works."

She frowns but nods.

I'm grateful that they haven't asked for clarification yet on any of the more personal details of the story. I didn't expect telling it to be so unsettling. I suppose this is the first time, though, that I've given any substantial thought to everything that happened there—the panic when they stripped me of my things, the hollowness of starvation and dehydration, the pain of their illusion torture...

I swallow and start back. "While I was recovering, the shaman tracked me down and attacked me. I managed to capture him instead. He wouldn't tell me anything. A few days later, I went to question him again and found him dead. I think a witch that was staying near where I was hiding found him, and for whatever reason, killed him." Such small words don't capture the image of his head barely hanging from his neck, but I'm not sure I would want it to. "Once I finished recovering, I rallied some help and broke back into the manor to capture Amarris. Shortly after that, I cast a spell that, though its effect worked, the price was too high. I survived because the girl that broke me out cast the same spell that—"

I study the floor, back of my nose burning. I feel like a child. I'm simply giving a report, yet I'm acting like a frightened servant girl. Surprisingly, neither of them prompt me to speak.

I meet their gazes again. "She cast the same spell Uncle did to save Sela. That's how Sela informed me as to what was happening here." I don't bother explaining the extra-dimensional nature of the Meadow; I know Reyan doesn't care. "After the spell finished, the three of us returned to our own bodies, with"—my hands clasp in front of me—"Uncle staying behind as the price for it. I was snowed in, though, deep in Draó, so I procured a spell from someone else that would let me teleport here with Amarris. I arrived in the forest outside the city and remembered an old passageway Agraund taught me of when we were young. I kept the traitor from knowing where it was but brought us through it. You know the rest."