The Jade City

Chapter 44: Uncertainty

I glanced at the others for them to say something, knowing I shouldn't be the one to answer.

"We were um... separated for a bit," Nya said with a forced smile, "Don't worry about it."

She twisted her head to look in a different direction, wincing.

"Do you know how far we are from Jade City?" Jay asked, quickly changing the topic.

"Oh, it's around a few miles away, we can get there by tomorrow," Skylor replied, frowning, her eyes on Nya, "But given your um... state, it might be better to spread the walk across two days."

She looked like she wanted to say more but didn't.

"Do you have food?" Jay asked, his face immediately turning red when the question was out.

"I can go back and get money," Skylor offered after a moment's hesitation, "But since we're not far from the village, it might be more convenient to go to your parents...? They do know about this, right?"

"About that..." Jay said with a nervous chuckle.

"When did you leave then?" she pressed.

"Several days after the attack," Zane answered.

"Please, you guys were gone the next day, I do have some information. You can tell me the truth. It's not like it's anything I can't handle. I happened to come across your parents, Nya, the day after the attack, and they were worried sick because their kids disappeared all of a sudden, so it seems like you already left by then..." She seemed to be talking to herself above all else.

"How did you find us?" Lloyd asked, clearly making an effort to change the topic.

"Um..." Skylor said, her cheeks flushing slightly pink, "I uh..." she began tugging on strands of her messy scarlet hair, which looked a thousand times healthier than any of ours did. "I was gonna go to the village to find Kai and I took this path in case my fiance woke up and―"

"You have a fiance?" Nya interrupted.

"Yeah, he's an idiotic misogynist and it's arranged, but anyway I came in here then I saw the light so I just came this way... I guess," she said with a half shrug.

Though her tone suggested that that was the end of the discussion about this fiance, I found myself way too invested in the fact that Kai's girlfriend was stuck in an arranged―then I remembered that she'd never be able to see him again.

Hopefully her fiance wasn't too bad?

"Okay, so what is going on? When did you leave? Where are the others? And... since when did you guys know each other?" Skylor looked back and forth between me and the others, and I found myself more annoyed with her now than I'd ever been in Ninjago.

If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be dead right now.

"Some prophecy said I have to defeat him," I said flatly, hoping that the answer would be satisfactory enough.

"What does that have to do with..." Skylor gestured to the remainder of the group.

To her credit, it didn't make sense that I, the princess, would enlist the help of a bunch of random teenagers from some village to help her defeat some evil bad guy, so though her question was perfectly valid, that didn't make answering it any less aggravating.

"They have powers, so we met and left right after," I explained further, my tone monotonous.

"So you did leave immediately," the redhead said, her voice calculating, frustrating me so much I wanted to tear out my hair as it took every ounce of muscle in my body to not roll my eyes.