Love and War (Book 1)

Chapter 9

The carriage had reached the halfway point to Angora. Selina was reading a book or cooing at her daughter, Vladimir and Liam had exchanged glares throughout most of the trip until they found it more interesting to look out the window at the passing scenery outside, Roselyn was in a deep sleep leaning her head against Brandon's shoulder and Brandon was going between sleeping and looking out the window when almost everyone's stomachs began to growl. They stopped at a lake surrounded by pine trees and all exited the carriage. Selina was getting off before she looked at Brandon.

"Awe...thats cute...i'll have to tease him about that later.." She got out of the carriage and not even a moment later, Selina, Vladimir, and Liam were arguing,

"It's alright. Alice and I will be fine. I'm not a china doll that can be easily broken. I can protect both of us. You all need to hunt, I don't. Go. We'll be fine."

"I don't wanna risk it, some of the people Roselyn spoke about might have followed us." Liam stated.

"For once, I agree with Liam. One of us will have to stay back with you and Alice."

"NO. I can take care of myself AND my daughter. You both need to hunt. We'll be ok, I promise. If I need you, I'll call. I promise." Selina stated, smiling up at Liam, and kissing his cheek. "Now go."

"Fine. But we won't go far." Liam replied, kissing her forehead. The entire group fled into the woods to go hunt.

"Well now that they are gone hunting, I can do a bit of house-er carriage cleaning." Selina then began to clean out the carriage and do the laundry.

"Ohh, my back hurts. Now, What am I going to cook up for myself? Oh! Mushroom barley soup! I know there are some mushrooms and barely here somewhere..." Selina then doned her cloak, and grabbed both Alice's wicker basket and another wicker basket and went into the forest to collect the mushrooms, barely, wild onions, wild garlic, wild celery, and wild carrots. After collecting enough, Selina exits the forest and trips over a protruding tree root. Instead of fearing for herself, her attention is drawn to her daughter to see if she's alright.

"Oh, thank the gods...Alice is alright..." she then turned her attention to her own ankle. "What is it with me and tripping over tree roots? And I sprained my ankle. Again. Great..." She got up, picked up both her daughter and the basket of ingredients and limped over to the carriage and started a fire to cook the soup. After feeding herself and making sure Alice was fed and sleeping, she made a brace for her ankle and created a magic form shaped in the exact likeness of Andre.

"Let's see If I lost my edge," she mumbled to herself as she grabbed a sword and began to fight with the fake Andre.

The rest of the group had returned from hunting with full stomachs and stood open-mouthed as they watched Selina fight with the magic form. She gracefully leaped up the form landing on its shoulders for a split second, sliced off the head, kicked it into the lake, vaulted down, and turned around.

"Well, that was fun. Guess I haven't lost my... Oh... Uh... Welcome back? I was just uh... testing my reflexes and uh..."

"Where did you learn to do that?"

"I've been telling you that I'm pretty good with a sword since we got here."

"Wow. Just, wow."

"Thanks, I guess?"

"Come on, let's get back in the carriage."

"so...Roselyn...Brandon...you enjoy your cuddle sesh earlier?" Selina asked softly, fighting a smile as she cleaned up the area, with the pot and her bowl.

"That..that was an accident! I just fell when I-I was asleep." Roselyn tried to reason, but not really helping much with her case.

"Its ok...it was cute." Selina smiled, before putting away the utensils, picking up Alice's basket and ducking into the carriage.

"Well...I guess we should get back now." Brandon said, brushing his hair a bit as he, Roselyn, Janessa and Dawn got back onto the carriage.
"You wanna sit by the window or are you okay Ro?" Brandon asked her gently.

"I'm ok...for now...i'm really sorry about earlier..."

"Hey it's fine I'm not upset or anything. You were pretty tired so I don't blame you." Brandon said, with a small smile.

"He's always so kind to me...I think I'm falling for him..." Roselyn thought to herself as she climbed onto the carriage.

The rest of the group piled into the carriage and went on their way.

As soon as everyone was asleep, Selina removed the brace on her right ankle and began massaging it, she then replaced it and went to sleep.