The Storm Empire (Completed)

Chapter 10

Crystal rushed through the camp with Acorn by her side. Panting for her life, they scanned around. Crystal gripped the knife in her hands tightly, so that it created red marks on her palm.

"Where's Gray?" Acorn exclaimed to a senior warrior named Neon.

Neon pointed to the leaders there, "In there. She's having a meeting with-"

They scurried off, not caring to hear the last few words of her sentence.

"Gray!" Acorn cried, as she burst through the doors of the den. All heads turned towards the brown neko, as Crystal quickly ran to Gray, giving her the knife.

"Thank the heavens you're here," Eclipse exclaimed, "We got your message. Where in Arian did you find it?"

"In the Ice Kingdom. The sunos gave us a bag filled with supplies as a reward for modelling," panted Acorn tirelessly, "And.. we found the knife in it."

"Yeah. It took awhile, but I realized why it was so familiar," added Crystal. "I rushed back as soon as I could. And by that, I mean that I threatened to rip Hawk's damn wings off if he didn't fly me home."

Gray held the knife in her hands, and examined it.

"Are you absolutely sure this was the same exact knife?" She hesitated, feeling the knife's handle.

Crystal nodded, then pointed to a scratch mark on the handle,

"You see this scratch mark? I remember seeing it when I took the knife out of Strikepaw." She cowered at the disturbing memory, which replayed in her head over and over again. "And this one scratch isn't from Strikepaw. It's from me." She pointed the the one that was the deepest. Gray knew that her sister always had strong grip strength. No reason to doubt that.

"Oh, yeah there's one more thing too," Acorn remembered from the top of her head, "We're going to meet with Northstar, the Ice Kingdom's leader about the knife. The meeting will take place tomorrow when the sun rises. Lark and Pluto are going to be come as well."

Gray widened her eyes, "Lark? Pluto? What do they have to do with this?"

Acorn nodded at Crystal, and she opened her lips to speak,

"We ran into Lark while we were on our way to the Ice Kingdom. Turns out he wants to model too. What a coincidence, eh?"

"Are you sure it was a coincidence?" Red suddenly spoke, his ears whipped back.

Crystal gazed at him, while tilting her head,

"What are you saying, Red?"

"I'm saying," Red looked down, "that maybe Lark was the one who killed Strikepaw."

"WHAT?"

"He went home that day. I am sure of it. I did DO something. If anyone who is not registered in our clan is on campus, a notification will wake me up," answered Crystal, her eyes sure.

"He could've glitched it and made past it."

"That's impossible," Crystal shook her head, dismissing the thought. It wouldn't make sense anyway. Lark cares about me, so why would he kill Strikepaw?

The rope. Suddenly, Crystal remembered. Lark wanted to take a piece of rope, but she didn't know why. Acorn peered at her, her face twisted with thought. Suddenly, they met glances and it's as if she could read her mind.

"Should we tell them about the rope?" Acorn mouthed.

Crystal shook her head ever so slightly, so that it could be just mistaken as a soft tremble. Besides, I don't want to make him a suspect, she thought. Gray, who kept her gaze on the floor, finally looked up before taking a long awaited sigh. She looked at Red, who looked right back at her without hesitating to look away. They looked at each other deeply so that their souls could be seen through the gleams of their eye.