The Nightingale

Chapter Forty

"Wait." Natasha closed the fingers of her left hand around the locket and let her injured right arm rest on the table again, the movement of her fingers agitating the break in her bone. She ignored the pain, and the way Ben fell back into his seat with a frustrated expression, looking only at Ky.

"Whatever's in here is only going to give me a million more questions. There are answers I need first, answers you can give me now." Ky sat leaning over the table still, his hands clasped loosely together as he looked at her, waiting for Natasha to ask her questions.

"I was at the village over the mountains," she started, watching carefully as a mix of confusion and surprise started to work in Ky's eyes. "If you were there too, why did we not find each other?" She knew that her questions sounded accusatory, questioning if he had really searched for her, but she needed to know.

"I was there, Natasha, I swear. I waited for you to show up for two days, but after you didn't come, I had to move on. There were spies there, and the longer I stayed, the more dangerous it became for me. And," he paused, looking down at his hands, "When I couldn't find you, I assumed you had died. I left the village and traveled back to our home, only to find that the remaining Guards were rounding up our friends and family and-" As Ky put his head in his hands, Natasha's mind drifted back to her venture back to her home with John, and the carnage that had replaced her village.

"There was nothing I could do," he whispered, "They had already begun slaughtering them, burning our homes... I was too late." Natasha's heart dropped into her stomach as she realized that Ky had likely seen his own family murdered before his eyes, his parents and two younger sisters fallen victim to the war that she had started, and the thought made her nauseous. She wanted to say something to Ky, to comfort him, but she was afraid that if she opened her mouth to try to speak, either the churning in her stomach or the guilt she felt would betray her, so she clenched her fingers tighter around the locket that dug into her palm and bared her teeth, willing the pain away.

"After that," Ky continued after exhaling deeply, "I bought passage on a transport boat that was heading to the kingdom, and found myself at this fishing village, where I met Ben when I overheard his conversation about the girl everyone was looking for, who had escaped with a band of pirates and evaded the Lords men on multiple occasions. I knew it was you." Ky looked back up at her, and Natasha noted the fleeting tears in his eyes as the hope returned to them. "I've been here hardly a day word made it back to us from the village that Ben was bringing you here."

"Us?" Natasha questioned, looking between Ky and Ben, who had busied himself with eating the stew he had made while the two of them spoke. He looked up at her question, though, swallowing an oversized spoonful.

"I told you before, girl ain't the only one who hates those men," he spoke as he wiped his mouth with a stained napkin. "The other families around here and on the other edge of the forest have been outspoken against them for a long time, although it's much more in secret now, after they started sending their men down here to patrol. When we heard you were possibly alive, we started taking shifts down at the village to keep an eye out for you, set up a system to get the word back here if you showed. We were hopeful, of course, but many of us thought you'd never actually show."

"I still don't understand why you need me so terribly," Natasha sighed, looking between Ben and Ky. "If you're all so unhappy, why you haven't just taken action yourselves?" She watched as Ben and Ky exchanged glances, and she sensed that they both had answers to her questions, and her frustration bubbled as she realized they were both keeping information from her.

"It's about time you opened that locket, Natasha," Ky spoke up, and Natasha's eyes flew to his face. He knew what was in it, she realized, but still seemed more patient than Ben as she moved her injured hand to use her fingers to pry open the locket.