Inside the Beast's Castle

Chapter 22--Trust

It felt like forever before Vadik spoke.

We'd gone past the entrance to the woods and run deeper than I'd gone before. Wolves' howls shook the leaves of each tree branch, with dying rays of the sun peeking through.

When Vadik did say something, it was when his legs had given up and folded under him. He crashed to the ground, breathless, eyes closed.

I knelt beside him, too out of air to call out. Instead, my hand found his shoulder, where I squeezed. At first, he didn't move, but after a moment his weight shifted as he sat up.

A line of red ran down the back of his neck from his head. I reached toward it, but didn't touch.

"Your head..."

Those two words were all I could muster.

At the sight of me reaching toward him, Vadik backed away as fast as he could. His face twisted in a mixture of pain and fear. With his left hand, he brushed the back of his head, only for his fingertips to come away shining red.

"I got hit harder than I thought," he mumbled. He gazed at me with wild eyes.

It didn't take a genius to realize what he meant.

I stood with him. "I'm not dead, Vadik. That should be obvious by now."

He swallowed and kept going backward until he ran into a tree. "Unless you're a hallucination caused by me getting slammed into a wall."

I crossed my arms. "You grabbed me and gave me a hug a before that. I'm pretty solid."

"Zara," He let out a shaky breath. For the first time, it looked like he was genuinely frightened.  "What I saw in there--right now I really need proof, okay?"

Leave it to Vadik to not believe me.

Then again, I couldn't blame him.

I bent down and plucked a small stone hidden in the grass. Without much thought, I flung it toward Vadik, where it hit his knees and bounced off.

While he stood trying to process what just happened, I walked to him and grabbed his arm. Without a fight, he let me pull him to the ground again.

I brushed some of his hair to the side. "While you're still going through your whole disbelief idea of the day, I'm going to look at your head, 'kay?"

A small nod was my reply.

Thankfully, the spot on his head wasn't as bad as I originally imaginied. Blood clumped up sections of his hair together, some of it dried and some of it not. The place he hit wasn't indented into his brain, but red and purple from where a bruise had already started to form. The cut itself wasn't deep,  it long and wide enough to cause him problems before he got back to Edria.

I stared for a second, the made up my mind. "Vadik?"

He tensed. "Yes?"

Still, he believed me to be an illusion.

I bit my lip. "The spot's not bad, but I'm going to get water and a towel to try and clean this a little, okay?"

A nod was the answer.

I grabbed his hand. There as no doubt in my mind he thought I'd get up to get the items.

My heart pounded. If he started to run, the vespers would catch him before I did. If he panicked even more than he was, we'd both be dinner.

"Please don't freak out."

Vadik raised an eyebrow. "Why would I--"

"Kinisiv."