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Jasmine
I HEARD THE WARNINGhorns thrice more while I waited for my friends in the forest. The night was crisp, and the lack of sleep was starting to get to me when they appeared on the road, riding their horses and searching for me.
I got out of my little hiding place behind a bush to reveal myself to them. Kieran saw me first, my movement grabbing his attention and making him turn to the forest to spot me. Pulling on the reins to make his stallion stop, the Prince of Dark gestured at the others so they would see me too.
Their expressions were full of scorn and anger as they all stopped to look down on me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, taking a few more steps to get on the dirt road. “I could not leave it to die.”
Kieran would not speak. I was sure that saving the monster had been the right thing to do, yet guilt roamed in me as I looked away from his disappointed expression.
“And you thought we would?” Fiona asked.
This was not the reaction I had been expecting. I thought they would scold me for interfering with the town and for endangering our mission to save one monster when we were trying to save every single one of them.
“You weren’t?” I asked her. “But you all seemed indifferent to the fate of the monster.”
“We should leave before the townsfolk catch up,” Kieran said, making his horse move without waiting for confirmation from the others.
Dearen was pulling the reins of my horse. I went to him to take the mare from him. He did not avoid my gaze as he dropped the rein in my palm, but just like the others, he seemed disappointed in me.
The mare moved its head toward me to welcome her rider, and before I got on her, I patted her back to assure her.
The others had started following Kieran on the road. After I got on my mare, I joined them. We were riding our horses on the main road to put a distance between us and the town as quickly as possible, but we did not make the horses gallop. I was afraid to ask why.
“When I left to fetch some water to wash up, I went to the innkeeper to ask him if they had a portal to send a message. I told him that I wanted to make sure our mother knew where we were and that we were safe,” Fiona started speaking after a while, not looking my way but riding her horse beside me so that I could hear her icy words with ease. “I sent a letter to father, asking him to issue an order to the town. I was unsure if he could act on time, but at night, he sent back an order to me with the crown seal. I was going to give it to the town and tell them to keep the monster for a few days until the crown soldiers arrived to take it. But when I woke up to the messenger’s knock on the door, I realized you were gone. Before I could do anything about it, we heard the bells.”
“And I...” Kieran said before I could respond to his sister, “...told you that I would be talking to their leader in the morning. They had lived through a frightening night with the bandit attack. It made them weary and afraid. I thought they would be more receptive in the morning.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but no words came out.
“What will happen if the monster returns to the village?” Dearen asked, striking the final blow. “Will you feel as righteous for freeing the monster when villagers die fighting it?”
It was unusual for Dearen to be so direct. He was the kind to keep his thoughts to himself. His rebuke hurt me even more than the others.
Tell them, the girl said. They will ask questions when no monsters attack you in the in-between realms, anyway.
She was right. I knew they were all right. I had acted on my own again, disregarding their input and taking things into my own hands because even after all the things we’d been through, I still had trouble trusting that my friends would do their best to save anyone, including a monster.
“It won’t,” I replied, taking a huge breath as I prepared myself for more rebuke. “The girl who spoke to me through the monster, the one who started all of this, is still inside my mind. She stayed to be our guide. She has access to the queen’s weapon, she can use it to control the monsters, and she promised me that she would make sure the monster will not return to the Unseelie lands. She sent it away.”
The silence that followed was telling. For a while, the only sound against the forest animals was the hoofbeats of our horses.
“And you chose not to tell us,” Fiona said.
She sounded hurt. I did not need to look into her to feel her sense of betrayal.
“I...” I mumbled.
“She doesn’t trust us,” Kieran said conclusively. The hurt in his voice was unmistakable.
“Of course I do,” I replied, even though I couldn’t be sure if that indeed were the truth. “I just thought... I thought you would not believe me. That you would think I was making it all up just to save the monster.”
“Why would we think that?” Fiona asked angrily. “If you told us that the girl is with you and she has the power to stop the monster, we would not have questioned your suggestion to free the monster. We thought we had no other choice because you hid this from us.”
“If she can control the monsters,” Kieran said thoughtfully. “She can stop all of it. “
The dark-eyed girl laughed inside my mind.
