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I stab at the thing wildly with my knife until I nail it right through one ear and it stops moving. It collapses, almost directly on top of Derith, but he rolls out of the way just in time.
“Thanks,” he says, a little grudgingly perhaps.
“We should probably keep moving,” I say, clearing my throat. “We don’t know what else could be lurking in the woods.”
“Lead the way.”
I nod and, looking down at the dirt covering my entire body, I start to brush the dust off myself. In the process, I knock the emerald locket out of my pocket and it thuds against the ground.
Derith and I look at it. Then at each other.
“The emerald,” he says as his eyes light with fury. “You stole from me?” he bellows, rage mingling with disbelief in his eyes. “Why the hell would you—”
He takes a few paces back, angrily walking from one arbitrarily chosen tree to another. He’s steaming, fuming, but he doesn’t attack me or even try to take the locket back. He just paces, and paces, and paces.
“I just—” I know how bad this looks, but I have no excuse. I took the emerald, and it didn’t belong to me. End of story. But the anger in his eyes is doing something to me—making me feel something I’m not accustomed to feeling. Guilt? It’s not as though I haven’t stolen things before—when you live a hand to mouth existence, such as I do, you take what you can to survive. And yet… yet, I feel bad for stealing from Derith—from someone who obviously trusts me. And from someone, dare I even say it… from someone I…like?
“You justwhat?” He turns on me, fire in his eyes. “You thought it was okay to steal from me, someone who is supposedly your partner?”
“We aren’t partners,” I insist, crossing my arms against my chest, even as the words sound stupid to my own ears.
“Regardless of what you want to term us… we are in this together—united by the same cause.”
I breathe in deeply but say nothing.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” he insists, treating me as though I’m five years old.
“Among other things, I’m also a thief,” I answer with an unconcerned shrug, even if I am cringing on the inside.
“That’s it?” he practically screams.
“That’s it.”
He breathes in deeply but then exhales just as deeply. “Fine—” Then he extends his hand out, palm facing upward.
I start to give him back the gem—which is his after all—but I can’t help myself. “Why does it mean so much to you?”
“That’s unimportant.”
“I just wondered…”
“This is not a negotiation.”
I take a deep breath. “The witch mentioned a jewel she used to tie together the spell that…”
“WE WILL NOT SPEAK OF SUCH THINGS!”
The violence of his response catches me completely off-guard and I guess I must look shocked because he backs down instantly, still prickly but also contrite. He runs a hand through his long hair and sighs.
“I am… what now stands before you,” he starts. “A monster. I can’t change that, it is what it is. What remains of the man I was—a mortal man—is ensconced in that gem,” he continues and motions towards it with a nod of his head. “There may be no way of getting that humanity back, but I prefer to keep the gem close, just… in case.”
I hand the stone back to him and truly feel guilty. “I’m sorry.”
He looks down at the amulet and then looks back up at me. Then he clears his throat and pockets the locket, looking anywhere but at me. “We ought to keep moving now. We’re wasting moonlight, as they say.”
“Yes.” I pause. “But, for the record; you may be trapped inside the body of a monster, but that man you spoke of is still in there.”
Derith says nothing.
