After Stellarlune

Chapter Seventeen

The next few minutes were chaos.

Doctors started running around everywhere, trying desperately to find out what had happened to make Ro's health drop so quickly, and trying to save her. The biggest doctor was shouting orders to the rest of the ogres, and everyone else was already talking frantically, so there was a lot of noise.

But Sophie only saw a few seconds of it. 

Suddenly someone was grabbing the hem of her tunic, and half throwing her out of the room.

"Out of the palace," King Dimitar shouted.

Then he slammed the door.

"Wait, we might be able to help!" Sophie cried. But there was no way the King would hear them. 

"Ow," Keefe groaned. "He didn't have to throw us that hard."

"That's what happens when you get on an ogre king's bad side," Grady said. 

"Foster would know," Keefe grumbled, stretching his back.

"We have to get back in," Sophie decided.

"Sophie, we've got to leave," Grady reminded her. "Remember what King Dimitar said?"

"Loudly," Keefe added. "With spit coming out of his mouth straight at our faces."

"Uh, there's no way we're going to leave," Sophie said. "Not when Ro's like that."

"Yeah," Keefe agreed. "Even if we can't help, I can't just go back home knowing that Ro's about to die." His voice was mostly steady, but there was a little crack at the end. Sophie squeezed his hand.

"She'll be okay."

Keefe didn't say anything, but he didn't let go of her hand.

"We've got to go," Grady said. He must have been in a hurry, because he hadn't even given Sophie a side glance when she took Keefe's hand.

"We're staying," Sophie said. 

"No Sophie, you don't understand. King Dimitar could kill us, without getting in trouble if we stayed here when he ordered us to leave. And knowing King Dimitar he might actually kill us."

"But we can't just leave," Sophie protested. 

"Maybe we should Foster," Keefe said. "We could stay on a Master Cadence's boat until we know Ro's better, just in case?"

"Okay," Sophie finally agreed. 

But her voice didn't sound right, and she couldn't feel her legs as they walked down the dark damp halls.

There were lots of times she had felt scared. After the fire in Eternalia where Councilor Kenric had died, when she had been running around looking for any other survivors. When the ogres had attacked Havenfield, and she had feared the worst for her parents. When they had walked into a battlefield. 

But this time she couldn't run around looking for her parents, or fight harder in a battle. This time she had to wait, and wait, and wait. It brought in a whole new level of fear. It was like a heavy cloud that surrounded her in so much fear that she couldn't think. And she couldn't do anything about it. She just had to wait for the good news. Or the bad news...

"It's okay Foster," Keefe whispered. "She'll make it."

And then Sophie realized that she wasn't the only one who was terrified.

But they kept moving forward, until it all became a blur, and suddenly Sophie was sitting at Master Cadence's table drinking a strange ogre drink. She was pretty sure she'd had it before.