Love Stories

Chapter Seven

Leah's seventeenth birthday passed in Elle and they didn't return to Valdara until the beginning of May. Riena only stayed a few days with them at the castle before returning to her home in Zulla. It was a little after that when Leah decided it was time to let go of Nash. Elle had helped relieve her pain and Derek had helped her realize there might be someone else. But if Nash ever came back saying he forgived her then she would be his, but for now she would try to let it go.

                Leah walked quickly down the hallway and pushed into her mother's rooms. No one was there, just like she knew no one would be there. She took one quick glance around the entry room, there was a a balcony right across from her and a couch against one of the walls. A mirror sat across from it but otherwise the room was rather empty. She turned and walked through a doorway that led to the queen's bedroom. A large bed, a wardrobe, and numerous dressers were scattered around the room, but her eyes were set on the shelves above a desk across the room.

                She crossed the room slowly, something about the room made her feel like if she went too quickly or loudly someone would jump out at her and tell her to leave. It wasn't a very pleasent thought. The box laid on the top shelf and she had to raise herself onto tiptoes to reach it. Even then she could barely grasp it and when she pulled it down a letter fell and landed open on the desk. Her curiousity got the best of her and Leah picked it up. Her eyes had only been scanning it a minute when her face went very pale and she dropped heavily into the chair next to her.

                She finished reading the rest of it hastily. After setting it back down she stared unseeingly at it for a moment before hurrying into action. She fumbled in her pocket and pulled the amethyst brooch out of it to set it in the box and put the lid back on it. Stepping onto the chair she could easily put the box back before jumping from the chair and snatching the letter back up. Her previous thoughts forgotten, she ran from the room.

                "Keldan!" Leah called loudly, barreling through the door to the library. Recently her brother had decided to get interested in reading and spent most of his time there. Despite her run, Leah's face was still pale and her eyes wide.

                "Shh, it's very hard to concentrate on these things even without distraction," her brother said, having not yet looked up. "Who ever thought someone could put so many words down all following the same train of thought, hundreds of pages through?" Then he looked up and instantly caught her gaze. "What is it? Are you sick?"

                Leah shook her head as she reached him and shoved the letter into his hands. "Read it," she said shakily, biting her lip to hold back tears.

                Keldan kept his ironies of her interrupting his reading to make him read something to himself and read it, pausing at the first line to look at her seriously before he finished it. He slowly folded it back up and got to his feet. "Sit down."

                Leah obeyed without thought, sitting in the chair he had just vacated without removing her eyes from him. The prince shut the door to the room and returned to stand in front of her. After that felt awkward he knelt by the side of her chair so they could be more eye level. "This doesn't mean anything, Leah," he said finally. "You're my sister."

                "But not fully," Leah mumbled before looking at him. "How could she do this?" she asked, referring to their mother.

                "This was seventeen years ago," Keldan said with a shake of his head. "We don't know what, exactly, was going on." He stopped and sat back on his heels. She wasn't his sister. Not fully. He unfolded the letter again and read it out loud.