Zeravia's Five

nine

June 2nd.

Gia was the only one home apart from William, Cassie and some war advisers who had been whispering about business for hours now. Around a week had gone by since Turham had been burnt down and they had all been relentlessly training.

Tate was still out with Simon, they had been sent on a simple mission to test their skills. If they succeeded, they would be given their first assignment concerning the upcoming war. Since the attack, not much had moved. The Enclave of Elders had sent a few scouts to Vyrdam, gathering information on their defensive and offensive strategies before sending out his special weapons.

Angel was going over multiple attack patterns with advisors in the training room. Being the only one with a truly offensive blessing, she needed to have everything in order in case they needed to match their attacks together in the future.

Izzie was nowhere to be found. Ever since the training had picked up again, she had been spending a lot of time with Tate whenever she could. Being an Empath, she had probably felt his spiralling. Everyone knew Tate hated the idea of war. He felt it was immoral, those were his very words. Whenever he tried to bring up the subject, William would shut him down and send him out to train.

"Tate is training right now," was what he'd tell the girls hours after he had been sent to the yard. A word they used to excuse the fact they were setting him up to fail. Making him go up against multiple opponents that were much bigger than him at once when he still had no idea what his blessing was. It was how William taught him lessons... indirectly beating the complete shit out of him. His scars came from these very punishments. What must have been a huge bummer for the adult was that Tate always ended up winning these matches, though wounded.

Gia used to think William was trying to help him be better somehow. She always believed in the man who had raised her and the ruling of the Elders. She had no reason not to. She used to think that if Tate stopped burying himself in those books that talked about the world and in his beliefs, he would spend more time training and he would actually be ready to go to war. He had always been strong in the girl's eyes, though for some reason he had also always been the weak link. Even though he was her best friend, she couldn't help it. Ever since Cassie had told her that, she couldn't erase it from her mind.

However, recently, watching her friend go through all that training and hearing the constant bickering of William... she started to feel like it was just personal. It was no longer about helping Tate improve, it was all about causing him pain. Mentally and physically. Her faith in William and the Elders was slowly fading.

The girl's curious nature pushed her to sneak out of her chambers and down to her father's study. She sat by the door, her back against the hard stone walls to listen in onto the conversation held in there. At first, she couldn't make out the sentences completely, trying to focus on at least some of the words, but even then, either they knew she was on the other side of the door or they were being overly cautious with the information they were sharing. She closed her eyes, leaning to the side, holding her breath thinking any of this would help her hear better. That was until she heard her name being called from inside the room. Her eyes opened wide and she swiftly stood up to her feet, ready to be reprimanded for eavesdropping, but instead they simply continued talking. Gia moved closer again, leaning against the wall ever so lightly as to not cause any noise.

"Tate has been distracted as of late, probably in those books again. We need to keep an eye on him, he could very well become a threat," a man spoke, his voice low with some type of raspiness. He sounded old... Gia didn't recognize that voice one bit, "I told you William... and he's dragging Isobel along with him, feeding her those things and she doesn't even know he's doing it," a lady spoke, sounding almost older than the previous man who had spoken up.