Broken Promises (Stolen Truth: Book 2)

1

Rat POV

"Why didn't you save me?" she asked, her voice sickly sweet and coated with poison.

"I-I couldn't," I sobbed.

"You promised though," she said, and I finally looked her in the eyes.

"I-I know, but I-I fulfilled some of i-it. I-I'm sorry! W-we all miss you s-so much. P-please not again, n-not again!"

"But you deserve it," Bunny said, "You let them kill me."

**********

"Rat!" A voice called, pulling me back into the real world, "Rat, are you okay?"

"Y-yeah," I said, turning to face Dove, "J-just another nightmare."

"Same one?" Dove asked, resting her hand on my cheek. I leant into her touch and nodded silently, trying not to cry.

"You know it isn't your fault, right? You couldn't have prevented it, you couldn't have known."

"B-but I promised her, and I miss her so much, it isn't fair."

"I know it's not fair," Dove said, "And I miss her too, all I can think about is her, but if you spend all your time wishing you could've done something else, the same thing will happen to someone else. Your people are already unwilling to trust you, we didn't even know you long before, and now we find out you're a prince, it's hard for them and you're not making it any easier for them."

"I-I know," I sighed, sitting up, "But it hasn't been that long since we found out, I have no idea how to lead or what to do, I've always been a soldier, my whole life was spent following orders and I can't even remember what happened before. I-I don't even know how to access these other powers I'm supposed to have. Like, I can kind of force my power into everyone else but I can't make it come out of me."

"You'll learn to," Dove said, sitting next to me, "And you'll be a great leader, once we find Viper she can help you out and – "

"No," I cut Dove off, "I want to find Viper just as much as anyone else but I have to learn to lead on my own as well. I-I'm a prince, and when all of this is over I'll be a king. They want me to lead them into a war but they can't trust me to do that."

"Um, Sir?" someone asked from outside the cart, "The council wanted to speak with you."

"I'm coming," I said, pecking Dove on the cheek and getting up, "And please don't call me 'sir' my name is Rat."

"Right, sorry," the person said, Otter I think their name was.

"It's okay, just sounds really weird to hear someone call me that, it's what we had to call the blanks," I said, walking with them, "Do you know what the council wants to talk about?"

"No idea, sorry," Otter shrugged, coming to a halt at the council trailer.

Since the attack on our old camp we've been moving around a lot, stealing trailers and supplies from passing blanks. We now had three large trailers and a few smaller carts as well. We had also been joined by a few new people like us, we had soon figured out that most, if not all, the soldiers were like us, when the blanks had taken the children they didn't just use them for experiments, they used them to build an army.

"You wanted to speak with me?" I said, climbing into the trailer. Each member of the council was sat in there, whispering quietly to one and other. The council had been revised not long after the attack on camp, there were some of the original people still there, Bear, Wolf and Robin, but we had to replace some as well. Spider had taken Viper's place in her absence, and Scorpion had taken Shark's place. After a long argument with Bear, I also managed to get Louis a place on there to replace Dolphin who had felt uncomfortable being there after the betrayal of her brother.