Renagade

Part 3

The party mostly ignored her, save for Styx who gave her a small bowl of something and smiled sheepishly when she set it down, and for Chauncy who in the dark, stared at her from across the fire. She cautiously peered at him and looked down. The moon rose high over their camp and he kept watch.

Iz or Isabella as she liked to be called tried joking with her coarsely but after the third joke, Evelyn fell silent and the woman settled down for the evening. This was a strange place, with even stranger people, and deep down, it frightened her. She coiled in on herself. Her body was still sore from whatever had happened; the sickness that had ravaged her in the Pits had abated and left her weak.

He watched her. She felt him watching her, even behind her closed lids. Now, this was real. Everything here was real. The dirt under her hands, the life she could feel in the air...the cow of the mourning doves. He was real, and she knew she was out and life was real again. She did not move when he came over. Beneath the unwashed scent, she could smell the spices, cardamom and cinnamon, that had brought her comfort in that place. They had only been whispers in that dream land, but now they were full bodied. She could hear his breathing and if she tried hard enough, the thump of his heart.

The woman he had grown to love; the woman that had haunted his dreams and his nightmares alike was sitting mere feet away from him. He rolled his shoulders against the cold and stared into the fire. The past few hours had been chaotic, and he shuddered to recall her face when he touched her for the first time.

They had been trying to get into Precipice Palace for months now, and it finally worked. Isabella had worked her way up into the slave masters quarters, like a fine whore. It had taken all the coin they had collected from their thieving during the High Days just to get her into the Palace...and it had taken more out of them to get her to that damned Pits. He closed his eyes and the image of her broken body had lain across the marbled alter. The man in the mask doing wicked things to her. He opened them. He wouldn't think about such things now. Resigning himself, he signed and got up. His knees stiff in the cold air, the wind quickly took the heat from his skin. Shuffling over to her, he grimaced inwardly as she flinched away. She was so small and fragile. He had to protect her.

"You should eat," He managed and sat down next to her, aware of how close they both were, and he shifted away, when his whole body screamed at him to hold her. His breath caught when she looked at him. Her once full eyes were now sunken. He had known that she wasn't going to be like the woman from the Veil, but the sight of her now, was half the woman she had been. He would get his revenge on the King, but not right now. Now he was going to take care of Evelyn for as long as it was going to take. She needed him, and gods above if he didn't need her.

"I'm not hungry...really. Thank you," He nodded slightly and returned to his visage of the fire. The mush given to her, ceased to steam. Oh how he longed to touch her, to be back in that dream realm.

Evelyn too, wished to be there, but try as she might, the memories of that dream state, pained her. Though her body, fatigued, she could not force her mind to rest. Every time she closed her eyes, she could feel that man's hands on her...those blades that carved into her flesh, only to be healed again. The camp slowed and the fire died down, and as she lay on the cold hard ground, Ev's thoughts swirled mercellesly. The more she anchored to the cold or to the ground or to the tactileness of this world, the more the crumbling of her mind fractured.

As the blackness of night, began to grey, she couldn't take it anymore. Tightening the thin blanket, that did little to warm her, she stood uneasily. Lumps, vaguely being-like, littered the camp site and she began to move. Her vision, though only partially clear, bobbed up in down, like the ocean, but she willed herself not to vomit. In the twilight, she was able to make out the little sheltered cove, the group had sought refuge in.