Life in the Flames

Life in the Flames-19

Chapter 19

Breaking Bonds and Creating New Ones

Reid's POV

I looked up to find Serra with a woman with her arms draped across Serra’s shoulders for support as she slowly limped over to one of the seats around the fire pit. Then the woman looked up at me- with HER eyes. Alonia’s eyes. Then when I took in the rest of her appearance, piercing pains of longing ripped through my chest.

The woman looked like a more matured and weathered form of Alonia. The same sun tanned skin, (but covered in scrapes and bruises,) the same round face with similar soft features except Alonia’s nose was cuter, and most of all the striking sea blue eyes. She had her brown hair pulled back in a bun revealing a large pink scar of a burn the size of her hand on her neck.

She caught my gaze in her and I could feel the pain, sorrow, and loss in her eyes, just like Aloina. Again the pain in my chest returned.

Then she broke our contact with a sigh before she continued to speak, “Prince Reid, Serra has told me you are here trying to seek and save my daughter, Alonia.”

“You’re Alonia’s mother,” Thorin broke in and said with wide eyed realization. “How did you manage to survive Ms. Seaream?”

“Survive?” she asked with a shudder, “You call failing to save your own people, watching the ones you care for suffer, losing your soul mate, your daughter, and life as you knew it, surviving?”

“Aunt Aubree, please,” Serra said in a caring, soothing tone. It was the nicest I had seen her act to anyone since we had joined with her group. “We found her unconscious and badly burned south of where the attack occurred. I and the remainder of the Southern Tribe members had finally gathered enough resources for a crossing on the small ship we had built so we could unite with the Northern Tribe. We must have missed the battle by just a day or so. We found nothing but ruins, fires still spilt smoke over the broken and demolished land. We searched and searched but found no survivors until we found Aubree.”

I watched as Alonia’s mother trembled slightly and battled to stop the tears that formed in her eyes. “I thought I was the only one left, but my daughter, she’s alive? I thought her to be dead like the rest of them. But you, Prince, brought her to Floric didn’t you?” she asked gently touching the burn on her neck.

“Yes ma’am,” I answered as I remembered carrying Alonia’s limp form onto my ship. If I had known that this was ever going to happen I wouldn’t have ever let her out of my arms.

“But now where is she?”

“We believe she was taken to Lathar.”

I watched as the color drained from her face and as pure horror and hatred climbed into her eyes. “Blast that Volcin! First my family and people in the south, then my husband and his clan, but he will not have Alonia too!”

“Ms. Seaream we do not plan on letting him,” Breezy said as she rejoined us at the fire pit. She glided over to the seat beside Aubree and took one of her hands. “Your daughter has become a dear friend of mine and I will do whatever it takes to get her back.”

“Friend?” she blinked, “my Alonia has a friend?”

“Yes miss,” Breezy said with a comforting smile. “I couldn’t ask for a better friend.”

That seemed to loosen her up a bit but then the question I dreaded came, “But why Prince, why are you risking everything you have back at your home for my daughter?”

I took a deep breath as I tried to formulate what I was going to say. I couldn’t tell her the truth, I wanted to tell that to Alonia and to Alonia alone.