The Felinites

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Abby's POV

I do decide to follow Dexter, but the moment's hesitation in the bedroom puts me far behind. I am forced to rush to catch up with Dexter who is now half-way down the hall.

"Wait," I call after him. He doesn't slow down as we weave through corridors in the castle, some of which I have never seen before. Often Dexter will trace the gems inlaid in the walls- or something like that- until a passage opens and we find ourselves beyond the main halls of the castle.

 He seems to be keeping just a little ahead of me. No matter how hard I try to catch up, he will speed up every time I do and slow down every time I do. I eventually huff and slow to a walk instead of continuously overworking myself. He slows but still keeps distance between us.

Finally, after he opens a wooden door, he pauses on the other side to wait for me. I am about to scold him for being a major butthole before I notice our surroundings. It is such a perfect place that I wonder if he read my mind. This is exactly the kind of place I had been wishing to go only moments ago.

We are on top of the castle, overlooking the entire planet of Filinus with a glorious view of the strange sky. I marvel at all the different colors above me; green, pink, blue, purple, and orange decorate the blackness above. The stars glitter and shine around the three moons. The details of the city below are not near as fine, but I can make out the streets dusted in pink sand and spot the lines of several shop doors on each side.

"It's beautiful," I whisper.

"I know. I stumbled across it a couple of years ago when I was off duty but had nowhere to go outside the castle," Dexter replies as he sits on the smooth rock surface under our feet. I drop to the ground close beside him, not so closely that we touch though.

"Do you enjoy being a Royal Guard?" I inquire curiously.

"On most days I do. But when there is trouble and betrayal in the kingdom, it is not quite as nice as it normally is," he answers.

I understand that the confusion with the transportation potions is what he means by trouble immediately. The betrayals he refers to, catches me off guard. As far as I know, there have not been any betrayals in the kingdom. Unless he means something Prissy has done. After all, she- an infamous criminal- has gone missing.

"What betrayals," I ask after a pause.

"Nothing that I should be saying anything about," he mutters with an edge to his voice.

I drop the subject and try to think of something else to talk about that he would feel free to tell me about. I decide to go with something simple. "So, what is your favorite color?"

He laughs, "My favorite color?" I nod as I wait patiently for an answer. "Green," he replies as he points at a slim streak of the color in the sky. "For whatever reason, I like that it is rarely visible in the sky."

"I think purple is even prettier," I tell him. Before he has a chance to ask me a question that I would not know the answer to, I quickly bombard him with another query. "What is your family like?"

"Big. I have three sisters, six brothers, and both of my parents," he says.

"Wow that is a fairly large family. I bet there is never a dull moment," I remark.

"There definitely is not. When we were younger my brothers and I would make huge messes when we played for our mother to clean up. Then when we all reached the teenage stage, we never wanted our sisters to leave without one of us with them. Otherwise they would find all kinds of trouble to get in," he replies.