Passion (Book 1 of "The Fantasy of Life" Series)

Chapter 19

York

We walked through the city at the same pace as we did in the forest. We didn't much pay attention to the people who passed us, every once in a while we'd wave or we'd say hi but no one was saying anything we needed to know. We passed one man however, he did a small double take when he saw us.

"Kel?" He smiled and walked back to our group, propping himself in front of all of us.

"Oh," Kel frowned. "Hey Geoffrey."

"How'd you get all the way here, I was looking for you back in Demeter for a year. What happened?" He stepped up to her. Her smile became a little self-conscious.

"I got caught stealing, had to run as fast as I could." She shrugged.

Ashanaya stepped up beside her. "Kel, who is this?"

He laughed. "You're hanging out with elves now?"

I raised my arm a little bit. "I'm a nymph."

He looked over most of the group to see me at the back, he winked and blew me a kiss. "Catch me in a bit."

I blushed and looked down at my feet, Valen narrowed his eyes and moved me behind him. Geoffrey wiggled his eyebrows at him.

"He's.. my brother." Kel said quietly. "He was supposed to be watching me when I ran from home."

"Yeah, so you ready to come back home?" He raised an eyebrow.

"No. I'm not coming home. At least not now, I've got stuff to do. That's okay, yeah?" She seemed really nervous.

"I-"

"Of course it is." I stepped up to her and put my hand on her shoulder. I looked to him, and Valen stepped behind me and spanked me lightly, I looked back at him and growled, then looked back to Geoffrey. "Now if you don't mind, we have stuff we need to do."

He put his hands up and backed away slowly, I could see he was furious but he was trying to hide it by smiling. "Hey, I get it, just happy to see my sister."

I gave him a very sarcastic smile. "Well this was nice, bye now."

We started walking forward again. Once Geoffrey was out of earshot I whispered to Kel. "Abusive?"

She nodded. "He was 16 when my parents died, he shouldn't have been allowed to but he had a dozen pints in a day. I started stealing because we didn't have any money, but he didn't care. Every time we got something new he'd assume I stole it and beat me, throw whatever he could find, that's what pushed me to finally leave."

"Who taught you to use throwing knives?" I asked, knowing he'd never show her how to use a weapon based on that situation.

"No one, I picked it up after I left." She said it so casually.

"Really?" I asked. "I've been practicing magic all my life and I just got good at it about a year ago."

"Yeah." She didn't seem that interested in the topic.

"Hmm." I looked back forward as we walked. We didn't have that many twist and turns, the city had an almost straight forward path to the other side of the city.

We walked in silence, I felt kinda bad for asking too many questions. Valen wrapped his arm around me. "Hey, you okay?"

I nodded. "Just overthinking some stuff."

"Tell me." I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

I lowered my voice to little more than a whisper. "Do you think I overstepped my boundary with Kel?"

"Why?" Valen pulled me a little closer.

"I don't know, I feel like I maybe asked too many questions and upset her." I shurgged.

He leaned over and gave me a really quick and short kiss. "I think you did fine, you got him away from her didn't you?"

"I guess I did." I gave a small smile.

"Don't feel bad for doing a good thing."

I nodded and I noticed we were getting close to the end of the city.

"Um, Ashanaya? Where in the forest were we supposed to go?" I looked back at her.

She looked to Cullen who already had his eyes closed trying to remember.

Cullen opened his eyes. "About half a mile into the woods theres a small quarry to the left about 150 feet, we should find Valerie in that quarry."

"Well we should get a move on, yeah?" Kel walked ahead of us toward the woods.