Fate and Destiny (The Fated Series, #2)

Chapter 5 - Lance - What Ifs

I miss her. I miss her more than anything and I want to find her – to get her back.

I made a promise to my father. A promise that I broke because of a stupid plan that my idiotic, crazed, relentless...beautiful sister made. A plan that saved countless lives in exchange for her own capture. She's everything our mother would've loved to call her child, and though I'm more proud of her than I've ever been, I'm gonna kill her. I'm going to find her, I'm going to save her and hug her to pure torture, and then I'm going to kill her.

Evidently, there's a line forming for the chance to do all of that, but I'm at the front, so I get the first punch.

No one here is in the mindset for the failure of finding her, and for that, I couldn't have asked for more for her. We walked into this whole mess over two months ago thinking it'd be no more than another mission. We knew that our lives were at stake with Will involved, but we had more confidence than I do now. We thought that we'd do our mission and be done with it, but that's not how it happened. The future is never written in stone and we should've seen the unexpected coming. But we didn't, and now here we are.

Thanks to the thirteen men with me, hope isn't something of short stock during our travels. Sure, they have their moments where the silence is a blade slowly pressing on your skin, but it's all out of hope. They hope, and their hope fuels them. I'm sorry to say that it's not what fuels me – it's never been. At least, it hasn't been for a long time, and I had my lessons learned from that very mistake. Lessons no one should have to learn the hard way or in any way at all for that matter.

It's anger. It fuels me, strengthens my blows, keeps my legs moving, and allows me to stay awake for days on end. I know that they're bags beneath my eyes that belong to an elderly man, but sleep feels like a distant thing when my mind races every moment. If I want to sleep, then I wait days until my body shuts down before I even hit the ground for the night's rest. I think I fell asleep gathering wood once, and someone carried me to my bedroll. No one said anything, so I don't know if it's true, but the last thing I remember was grabbing wood, and then I woke up next to a dead fire and the sunrise.

They're good men – good friends to have, they just remind me of her all too much. They talk, but not often, and when they do, they always look over their shoulder as if they're waiting for the snippy retort that doesn't come. Their faces fall when they realize it, and then they smile faintly, likely imagining what it is she'd say. They don't know her well enough to guess right at her words, but I am, and sometimes I find myself saying them aloud on accident.

It's hard not to say what she would, as we have always thought so similarly that our mother thought we could be twins. We'd finish each other's sentences, share one look and confess a hundred thoughts, know each and every one of each other's tells and fighting techniques, and we would fight against a single opponent together seamlessly without having to even try. We were the two halves of the same coin, and not having her here or knowing that she's safe, makes me feel like I'm missing a limb. Even when I was in Kaweth I at least knew she'd be safe. She can take care of herself, and I knew that if anything went wrong my father would send for me. The less I heard from him the better, because it meant that nothing was wrong. It's different this time, everything is, and so are the men around me.

Especially Darius. He's...off. Even more off than me, and that's pretty far off. He barely eats, barely sleeps – more than me, but not by much, – uses more energy to train than he has to spare, and has eyes that just look...empty. I know what those eyes mean, what they feel like, and where they came from. I just hope that I'm wrong and that what I think happened didn't actually happen. I'm not sure how I'd handle that truth.

It's hard to think otherwise when you look at the land. Normally, Alderic is thickly coated in snow this time of year, but now, only a thin three or so inches covers the rocky terrain. That's not even mentioning that all the snow is only present in certain spots. I can see more dead grass and mud than white, and we're nearing the middle of winter. The woods should be in white and black and the small stretch of flat land after the Great Redwood should be a labyrinth of winter, not brown and gold. The only normal thing around us is the biting wind and the warmth of the fires we light.