Hidden Spirit

Chapter Twenty-Six: Leaving

Her back burned.

Her spirits ached as the entirely foreign words and names and... summons... sat heavy in her mind.

She refused to look at the fresh lines on her back.

As promised, Andrew arrived in no more than two days. He'd been early, in fact. Followed by a party of armored men, traveling only on horseback and carrying only the simplest bags and parcels.

She stood alone in front of the keep in wait. She refused to have Feren join her, though she knew he was watching.

The urge to summon some spirit to protect her had never felt so strong.

Lone Voerr being approached by so many... non-Voerr.

The servants, who had so scrambled and rushed the last many days to restore at least some order back into the organization of the skeleton walls, stood tensely on the steps leading into the keep. Amelia could have blamed them as easily as anyone, for leaving the keep when the proper authority had left them.

Amelia had hardly even seen them. They seemed to have avoided her this last season. She knew that one of their overseers must have instructed them to not take direction from Amelia.

She wondered if that had been made an instruction by Lucia or Rosa or even Jed.

The moment Andrew was in range, he threw himself off the large mare and ran to pull Amelia into his grasp. The tight grip shocked her to silence, feeling his arms wrap around her as if he were trying to make some sort of apology.

She mentally rejected every possible effort.

As soon as he'd released her, she retreated back a step, even while he gripped her hand. He was saying something, but his words meant nothing. She let them fade through the air without recognition. Her stare was blank. She didn't want to see him; she didn't want to look into his eyes and know that her fate was sealed. She wrestled with herself internally to not turn around and run in the direction of the forest.

Andrew mistook her silence as a sign of some... trauma, or shock. He patted her shoulder a promised that she was safe now; that they would take care of her.

She said nothing until they were alone, and even then, she refused to be inside alone with him. The others seemed busy. Whatever knights or guards or men he'd brought with him were quickly situated within the keep with servants and maids and....

When Feren emerged at the beckoning of the tall, blonde-headed man who most obviously spoke of richness and power, even draped in traveling robes... her heart entirely split in two. She needed to run and wrap herself into the arms of the Voerr that looked at her so seriously; uncaring; nonchalant. He was ignoring her. As if he'd never even seen her before. As if she meant nothing to him.

Andrew didn't know. He couldn't know. It would put everything at risk.

She might have lead Andrew to question the situation when her throat shut tight and she had to turn away. She couldn't bear to look at him like this; like he was nothing to her. Luckily, Andrew was too preoccupied making his voice loud to sound important. He had attempted ask a string of questions directed at Feren regarding the attack. But at first, Feren was not paying attention to him, either. The sight of Amelia's crumbling resolve stabbed his chest. Before he could think better of it, he took a half step toward her figure when she turned and walked away, shaking her head to the ground.

Everything was numb in the moment it took Andrew to ask him what he was doing. Andrew's head whipped around to follow Feren's stern look. That was when Andrew realized that his... wife... was no longer next to him.