From The Ashes.

Chapter 38

The dinner was a level of awkward I had never experienced before. I barely ate a thing, watching Cody and Zak across the table as I physically yearned for my seat next to them. It had taken everything I had not to cry and now, the table put away and the dishes clean, I sat on my freezing balcony, ignoring the warm tears that fell like waterfalls down my cheeks. It was impossible to explain why everything hurt so badly, I was simultaneously numb and feeling like my soul was being ripped in half but, on the outside, I looked perfectly fine. How did you explain to people that on the inside, you were being tortured? How did you show people that you were hurting if there was no wound to offer them? I wiped at the tears, sniffling as I breathed in.

"I thought you'd be here." I jumped about a mile in the air as Dot plonked herself down beside me, rubbing her gloved hands together. She studied me and raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you cold?" I shrugged, staring through the railings around the balcony.

"I like sitting in the cold." Dot made a sound of understanding, her blonde hair, out of it's usual ponytail, blew around her face. We sat in silence, simply enjoying the cold breeze as it washed through us. It was kind of peaceful.

"Tera." Dot said after a few minutes and I looked at her. "Why do you want to leave?"

I leaned my head against the glass door behind me and gazed up at the grey sky far above us. The frigid air moved through my lungs like icicles as I took a deep breath in, closing my eyes as memories bombarded me. The feel of my siblings in my arms, the ugly redness of my fathers face as he yelled at me, the ashen colour on my mothers normally brown skin as she collapsed to the kitchen tiles. The freezing tears slipping down my cheeks as I walked into the embrace of the man who trained me, his brown eyes wide with disbelief when I told him what had happened. The rushed visits with my mother as she hurried to find a place for me, the move to Quelia and then a blur of pain and self hatred broken only when a red headed girl appeared.

I loved Rachel, honestly I did, she was a truly good person who knew everything there was to know, I swore. She was my best friend, she has saved my life, I couldn't contest that, but now... Now I felt myself questioning our relationship. Maybe it was because I had spent so much time away from her or because I'd built new relationships in her absence but suddenly, a lot of things were becoming clear to me. 

I'd never really questioned it before but why did Ceres never try to manipulate Rachel away from me? He'd cut her off from her entire family, everyone she once knew but hadn't even tried with me. Why? My heart sunk as I realised the answer, like a rockslide into my stomach. He had been manipulating her. He'd been trapping both of us in his web, manipulating me through her. I'd always thought that loyalty was a virtue but he'd used mine to trap me and it had taken the both of them leaving to break free from his trap. But, where did that leave me? Where did that leave Rachel? Was it selfish of me to think that I was the only one who could help her? Or, was I keeping her back from helping herself, allowing Ceres to tighten his grip on her?

Did I want to go back, not to protect her, but because it was safer than the uncertainty of staying here and facing whatever war this world was facing? Was I standing up for myself or was I running from the things this place offered me? Did I want to stay and abandon Rachel to her life or did I leave an abandon the people I'd grown close to over the past week? Did I choose being a human in the human world, or did I choose the magical world that I had never supposed to be a part of in the first place?

"I don't know." I muttered out loud. Dot leaned her head on my shoulder and I absently pushed her blonde hair out of my face.

"I want to leave one day." She whispered. It took me a second to realise what she said as her hand wrapped around mine. I stared at the top of her head, trying to figure out what to say or how to respond but the only thing I could think was why? Why would she want to leave this place, her pack, her family? My silence must have been all the answer she needed because she suddenly sniffled and shook her head. "I don't want to leave Ossian. I will forever be a member of this pack and this will forever be my home but... does that mean I will be confined here for my entire life? I love my pack but I want to see more of the world. I want to go on an adventure, see more than this little piece of land I've seen for all my twenty four years of life. I don't want to join another pack, I just want to see more."