Against an army

A point of no return

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten messages from Lindah, Dad, Leon, Mama Charly, Berna aunt,... continuous buzzing from countless missed calls, voice mails and text messages.

She put the phone on silent and put it on the table.

"Geez, even I could think I am a dead person." She  took her fresh cold mango juice in both hands, put the pie in the mouth and started sucking, then stared at her phone as notifications kept piling in.

"Wow!" She smiled 

once it was calm, she took it and started with the voice messages.

"Riann, I am starting to worry, please call me back as soon as you get this."-Leon

"Riann, where are you? you suddenly disappeared from the ball, I swear If you don't call back in twenty four hours, we'll calling the police."-Lindah

"Hey! where are you? we're all worried to death here, call me back"-Nick

"Riann, whatever is going on, we can take care of it together, please show yourself"-Leon

"Sweetie, your friends say they can't reach you, is everything alright? call me back." -Dad

"Oh my God, this is too much! I mean, I've only gone to sleep for ten hours and everyone is worried sick?"

She scrolled through all messages and came to conclusion that they were all asking her where she was then stopped reading and listening to them and chose to text Leon instead.

"I am back to Knightvalley, call me when you get here, not before that. We have a mission to finish." 

she switched off her phone the minute Leon's message was delivered. It would be offline for an other day, that is the wedding and then a new her would immerge after that. No Ace and absolutely no drama. She would take that day, run off somewhere, be sad and angry as much as she needed to for Ace to be drained from her system, then be back to her old self. It had been totally insane to even think that her plan could work. For the first time in her life she wished she had listened.

* * * * * * *

Montero sat in his office doing his morning routine-checking E-mails, as always. It would have been a Monday like the others, if his youngest crazy daughter didn't bulge in with a stack of papers in her hands and looking as serious as she had never been.

"What is it sweetie" he asked gently.

"I'll be straight to the point," She paused and came closer to his desk and slid the papers to him. Upon looking at them, his eyes popped.

"Riann who gave you these?" He stood up. There was a change in his tone and she could tell it was terror mixed with surprise and anger

"What matters is what I have to do with them father, don't you think?"

He looked at her deeply and came around the table with the papers in his right hand. With the left, he gripped her arm tightly and pulled her close.

"You know that I can't save you this time if the King found out you have these, right?" he held them directly to her face.

" What I know is that if you don't help us, people will keep on dying. That list will keep on increasing until all that is left of peasants are women and children who too to die of hunger." He released her upon seeing that she had been digging for long, maybe she had never stopped digging anyway. How comes he had never seen it? He should have know that just like her mother, Riann didn't easily give up.

"How much do you know?" He asked.

"Enough to know that there is a secret meeting with other kings this coming weekend, I have reasons to believe it has to do with that tower he is building."