The Forbidden Princess [Paused]

Chapter 16: Camping with Comrades

Jesse came running to my side.

He bent down to be right beside me. "Are you okay?"

I nodded. "Yes. Of course I'm fine. Just a bad dream."

"Okay," he said. "Just try to sleep again." Jesse smiled and started to leave but I stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"No, you need to sleep," I insisted, loosening my grasp. I looked over at Caiden. "Both of you. Go to sleep, I'll take watch."

Jesse didn't argue with me. He immediately laid down and was fast asleep before I could even get up. Caiden slugged over to also lay down, collapsing on his blankets with a loud groan.

I wanted to talk about my dream. I needed to talk about it. When I was younger and I had a bad dream or needed to talk about something, my mother would always let me. I felt like if I didn't get it off my chest soon I would explode.

And that's what I felt like right now, but I didn't want to disturb Liv. She needed sleep too. We all needed to rest up for tomorrow. However, I woke her up anyways. I really needed to talk about my dream and what it meant.

"Liv!" I whispered urgently. I shook her gently. "Liv, wake up!" I shook her a bit harder, causing her to jump awake and punch me in the face.

"Ow!" I yelled out, rolling over grabbing my nose.

"Charlotte?" Liv squinted at me and rubbed her eyes to see if it was me, then realizing who she hit, helped me up.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't realize it was you. Is your nose okay?"

I couldn't see if it was bleeding because the fire light was so dim now, but I could feel the sticky substance on my fingers.

"It's just bleeding a little. It's fine," I insisted.

"Oh my gosh! Let me at least get you a wet cloth."

Before I could tell her to not worry about it, she had jumped up and ran to tear one of the blankets, taking the small piece of fabric to wet in the river.

My nose was beginning to throb, also causing a headache to begin to form.

When she came back, she handed the now wet cloth to me, sitting back down beside me in front of the ebbing flames.

"I didn't want to waste the canteen water," she said. "So I hope it's still not too late to help your injury."

I placed the cloth on my nose and smiled. "It's never to late to help."

We didn't say anything for a while. We both just sat there, listening to the crickets chirping, the fire crackling, the boys snoring, and the river babbling.

"Can I talk to you about something?" I finally asked.

Liv nodded. "Of course you can."

I took a deep breath then continued. "I had a dream just now. Well, it was more of a flashback really, from when we were kids. You had come over and we were playing."

"And?"

"We just played with dolls like we usually did. But that's not the point. You mentioned someone."

"Who?"

"Arthur."

Liv didn't say anything; she just stared into the fire, her expression changing from curiosity, to confusion, to anger, to finally, calmness.

She turned to me then calmly said, "Yeah. He was my brother."

"I know," I said. "I had forgotten who he was until just now."