The 100 - The Princess' Guilt

Her Agreement

Clarke

I didn't ever plan to go back to Lexa. After everything that had happened, ultimately failing in my fight for an alliance she broke, feeling so betrayed by her, and yet, I had no right to judge since . . . I'd eventually become her.

It was on Day Twenty-Eight that I stood with Reyna in the Floukru Heda's tent staring at the Commander.

It takes me a few minutes before I finally turn to Echo with a careful tone and respectful expression. "You said she wouldn't be back for another two weeks."

The woman in front of me is just a bit older than Reyna with long dark brown hair braided back over her shoulders where the cut scoop of her neckline reveals a dark tattoo on her right shoulder, dropping down underneath the rest of the sleeve. Her hazel eyes are serious on her long, drawn oval face, complementing the long limbs of her arms and legs.

She meets my accusing glare head on and replies shortly in her high lilting voice, "I lied."

So I, in turn, spin around to glance at Reyna who looks appropriately abashed at her part in deceiving me. She's as dark-skinned as Wells, with ebony colored hair that was braided halfway before curling out in thick gorgeous waves. Her bright calculating emerald eyes studying me from under her long eyelashes standing there with just as beautiful a body hidden underneath her dark trousers and soft leather jacket with chafing pads as armor sewn into the shoulders.

"You sought me out," I voice my anger. "Told me you only wanted me to talk to your clan leader-"

"No, I told you that the Commander would want to speak with you as well." Reyna's husky low voice defends herself and I shake my head at her, remembering her appearance in the forest five days prior.

She'd been trailing me for a good half hour and when I finally called attention to that fact, she'd jumped out of the tree above and landed right in front of me. I stood there silently taking in her furrowed brows and older worry lines across her forehead that aged her a good eight years or so more than me. She'd recognized me from "the Commander's description" and when I stiffened in surprise, she introduced herself to me as a clans person of the Floukru - the Boat People - and spoke of how her Heda wished to speak with me about the happenings of the mountain after their people had left. I'd ultimately refused until she'd grabbed my left arm and noted my wince, pushing up my sleeve so that she found the numerous jagged pink lines puckering up into new scars. I'd struggled out of her hold and started to walk away until her next words cut right to the walls around my heart, threatening to break out the waves of emotions there.

Those words were enough that she'd convinced me to travel with her for two and a half days until we reached TonDC. Enough that she became somewhat of my reluctant mentor, teaching me how to carve a bow and arrows out of fallen branches and stone, sewing together cloth for a quiver, learning to use them quickly on our second night when we were attacked by two mutated panthers. While the two-headed one managed to slash me over my right eye, I put three arrows - through poor technique, Reyna told me later - in it, while she, quite literally, rode the other split-tailed one like a horse before stabbing it in the back through the heart.

After that I didn't question her. She showed me how to line the insides of my pants with animal fur to stay warm, which plant's pollen could be ground up into a paste that hid my scars and the dark rings under my eyes. Even the bow and arrows I now carried over my shoulder with a comforting confidence in my newfound ability, and I couldn't help but practice my walk - she'd showed me herself, how to move through the forest silently.

The city itself was rebuilding and yet, everyone paused at our - or rather my - entrance. Within minutes, we'd been escorted quickly to the tree line at the far edge of the city where hundreds of tents laid in wait, about ten a good distance between the tree line and the city with clear markings on them. The Hedas of the clans.