Because I Love You✔️

Chapter 28: Her Choice

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Her Choice

Something was wrong.

Very wrong indeed.

Instinctively, Xaphile could tell that something weird had happened. After the exhaustion he'd wrought upon himself the previous evening, he'd figured he'd have been tired for days, but instead he had woken up feeling surprisingly well-rested.

It hadn't been until after everyone had started packing up that he'd noticed the weird atmosphere.

The mood between Gus and Amelia was bizarrely tense, and Ella kept looking at him in a different way than usual.

This new stare was completely different from the 'you-are-a-bug-and-I-am-resisting-the-urge-to-squish-you' stare she had employed until today. This stare just seemed... well, he didn't quite know what it seemed like. It was almost as if she didn't know what to make of him.

Xaphile watched the three of them ride their horses along the dark forest path with an uncertain expression.

Something was definitely wrong, he just didn't know what it was.

After about an hour of dealing with his building anxiety, he decided to breach the topic and drew his horse close to Amelia's. She had her nose buried in a book and seemed to be lost beneath its pages, but for some reason there were dark bags under her eyes.

He momentarily wondered if she'd slept all right.

"Amelia?" he quietly inquired, raising an eyebrow in perplexity. "Are you all right?"

"Huh?" she mumbled, looking up at him with glazed blue eyes. "Oh... yes, Phil. I'm fine."

He wasn't convinced, but he didn't press the topic since she didn't seem too eager to explain.

Not too far behind them, Gus was poring over the map, looking a little irritated, and ahead of them, Ella was sitting slouched on her horse, cloak drawn around her like a blanket.

"Are you okay?"

Her sudden inquiry made him jump, tail puffing out a bit from the shock.

"Er, um... yeah," he mumbled, shrugging a bit. "It's just, there's sort of a lot on my mind."

"Such as?" she inquired, looking at him a little more curiously. "Want to talk about it?"

His lips pressed into a thin line and he lowered his eyes.

"Fights," he said firmly, ignoring how she blinked. "I hate fights, I hate violence, and I hate yelling."

Amelia blinked, then closed her book and put it inside her bag before reigning her horse a bit closer to his. She gently gripped his arm, forcing him to look at her.

"I'm tired of this, so I'm just going to tell you as honestly as I can," she whispered, speaking so quietly that he was certain only he could hear her. "Ella thinks fear is a weakness, so she hides it with anger. And because she's very afraid of you, specifically, you've seen nothing but cruelty."

He processed that blankly for a few seconds, then tilted his head, ears bobbing a little.

"So?" he asked, speaking quietly as well. "That alone doesn't justify her actions."

"Indeed," she sighed, giving him an earnest expression, "but, I finally managed to talk some real sense into her yesterday. I finally got through to her with how unpleasant your current situation is, and because of that, I can assure you, she's genuinely sorry for everything she's done."