Denial of the Whisper

Chapter Forty-Five.

Chapter Forty-Five.

One of us had to die.

I had thought about it a lot during the last days and I was absolute certain about it.

It was Nyshard, the King of Kalash, or me.

And personally, I preferred the King if Kalash, because his attack against the Isle of Gnys so many years ago had started it all.

He was responsible.
He had killed my family and so many more.

And he was the one that would hunt me, once he got to know about me.

Nyshard... I didn't know if any of my words had reached him at all. During the past days, I had trained hard with Caaln, and it almost seemed as if the seal upon my powers had cracked open a bit more. Luckily.

I even got over my revulsion to shoot arrows and Caaln let me shoot from horseback and from ridiculously large distances. I improved a lot, but at the same time, my heart got a bit heavier the more I thought about the situation we were in. What Nyshard had told me about the promise he had given... it was painfully twisted. And what bothered me most, was that my father had known about Nyshard's Whisper and had known that I would probably hate Nyshard because of it one day. And that... meant, that my father had wanted me to hate Nyshard. And that seemed... so incredibly cruel. Nyshard had protected me. And he still did, and he had told me so often that he would have done it no matter if he had given the promise or not. He had always just told me, that he might not have done all of it. And I wondered, what that meant.

He had promised to...

Find me

Protect me

Help me find my destiny

And to fulfil his own.

Which one of that was the one he wouldn't have done if it had been his choice?

No matter how much I thought about it, and considering how much I knew Nyshard believed in fate and destiny, I knew that it hadn't been the last two parts. So, maybe... it was the protecting part. Or the part about finding me. Or... the third option.

He still hadn't told me all of it.

And that seemed – knowing Nyshard – actually like the best and most obvious option.

But I didn't know if I could ask him that.

He was... ever since our talk, he was polite. It was strange, but somehow, that described it best. The three of us ate breakfast and dinner together each day, and he always asked me either about how I had slept, or about my day. He asked about my progress, talked with Caaln about what he thought about my training, then, he would leave.

He not once spoke to me again in private and... all those polite questions during breakfast or dinner were just that. Politeness.

And it made me miss him. The real him.

I missed the Nyshard that had told me that he liked me when we had stayed in the cave in the Mountains of Myrna. I missed the man that had offered me comfort after he had told me about my father.

I missed the friend he had become.
It was almost as if he already tried to stay away. While not doing so.

It was more... emotional distance.

Somehow.

He wasn't cold to me, but he was distant.

And that kind of hurt.