Runaway

Chapter 8: Syron and Dean

The night gets darker as we traveled. After meeting Syron in the woods I become more cautious and paranoid as we neared the Hills. It was almost midnight and we were still about to cross a clearing in a middle of a steep forest in the mountains. The clearing was wide and vast, almost a meadow in the middle of a forest.

I grasp the leather harness that was attached to Macey and we halt in front of the clearing.

"Are we there yet?" Syron's voice startled me. I never thought he was still awake.

"We're almost there; just give it an hour or two. This escape route took longer than I expected." I looked at Syron behind me. In the moonlight, his face looks rigid and rough.

"I can't go on much longer." He winced in pain, his body shivered.

"What's that?" I asked, taking his hand that he used to cover his side. He groaned as I took his hand, blood was staining his clothes and his hands, "Oh my God."

"Leave me here, I'll be fine. Just go." He said, panting.

"No." I sighed, "I can't leave you here. I don't like leaving tracks besides, you owe me an explanation."

I climbed down from the horse and I let Syron too.

"What are you doing?"

"Sit down here." I said, pointing at the spot under a tall mahogany tree. He did as I said, wincing as he go.

"Take off your clothes."

"What?" He furrowed his eyebrows and I rolled my eyes.

"Do you want to live longer or not?"

He took off his clothes, revealing a toned body and a bleeding side wound just beneath his rib cage. I rip off one side of his shirt to bandage the wound and apply pressure to it.

"That looks awful." I said trying not to stare at his body in the glow under the moonlight. "I mean...your wound. It looks deep."

"What else did you mean that for?" He smirked, and I just shrug him off. "You know what, for a princess you don't act like one."

"I wasn't cut off for being one. And hey, you know what for a bleeding person, you talk too much."

After doing what I could to treat his wounds, I help him get into Macey's saddle before I did. I knew that we were running late this time and we need to move fast before search parties could get here.

We travelled silently but swiftly and I let Macey run as fast as she could. In about an hour after the short delay in the clearing, we made to the Hills. We finally made it to the Hills.

It was still dark when we arrived and the skies were painted in midnight blue. I helped Syron climb out of the saddle and he placed his weight on my shoulders as we walked to the barn house. When we reached the door, I knock as loud as I could. Syron was almost passing out beside me, he could barely stand.

"Eira, you're here." Dean said right after he opened the door, "And you brought company."

"Hurry, help me. He's bleeding out."

Dean shifted Syron's weight in his shoulders. "Clear the table." I hurried to move away everything on the table as Dean placed Syron on their wide table that they use as their work place in the kitchen.

Dean woke the others up to help him treat Syron's wounds and I sat there contemplating on what I have just done.

I ran my fingers to my unexpectedly damp hair, burying my face in my knees. I ran miles away from the palace, I didn't say my vows as the heir to the throne, I ran away with a horse named Macey, I almost killed a guy who is now being treated in a work table and now I walk into the Hills, bringing trouble with me. Oh God.

"Hey," Dean sat beside me. "You okay?"

"I don't know." I sighed exasperatedly.

"Whoa, you look different." He said, gesturing at my now dyed black hair.

"Yeah," I smiled weakly at him. He sat there beside me, dangerously close. There was a silence between us that I cannot explain but he broke it and let the words slide out of his mouth.

"Who is he, the man that you've brought in? I thought you don't have friends in the palace... or maybe he is not just a friend?" He said in a confused and mocking tone.

I took a deep breath, "He is not my friend. I don't know him, Dean. I-"

"Then why did you take him here?"

"Dean, let me explain. I meet him in the woods, he was following me. H-he knew who I was. I stabbed him in the shoulder and I-I..." I buried my head in my knees, not knowing what to say any more.

"You did that to him?"

"Only the stab in the shoulder, the other wounds, I don't know where he got it." I said, not raising my head so my voice was muffled.

"Why didn't you just kill him? Or, or let him go?" Dean said, tilting my chin so that I could face him. His blue eyes look deep in mine.

"He knew me, Dean. Something tells me that he knows something about me, about the palace that I don't. I need information, that's why I'm running away. I need to know the truth from outside the palace walls."

He looked at me with sad eyes as he let me lean on his chest to sleep.

That night I slept in Dean's arms in a warm cot in the barn house.