Fallen Allegiance

Chapter Twenty Three

We set up camp in tents Ianthe had brought. Melissa, Cozae and I were cramped in one while Ianthe, Zane and Sayer shared the other. I could hear Sayer and Ianthe bickering as I laid down and tried to sleep. They seemed to be arguing about Andor, and it gave me some comfort Sayer was sticking up for me.

After what must have been hours of listening to them, Sayer shouted,“She knows what she’s doing, Ianthe, and what the consequences are. Just leave her alone." That ended the argument, plunging the night into silence.

***

“Where are we going?” A boy squeaks at me, staring at me with his big blue eyes.

I smile and pat his head, “Somewhere magical.” I take his hand and pull him along with me. I recognize him from my past dream. Byron, the boy who served Silera, but this time Silera is nowhere in sight. 

We walk down the street, a few cars past us but otherwise it’s silent.  I keep glancing around, checking we’re not being followed. No one can know where we’re going, what we’re about to create. A portal is a dangerous item in the wrong hands, and I guess you could call my hands the wrong hands. I smile slyly, this would teach those fools Sayer and Dwynwen a lesson when they saw me again.

A shadow begins to tower over me and I steady my breathing, clutching my knife in my right hand, ready to attack. These are dangerous times for me and I would do anything to succeed. Anything. Even if that meant killing a few people. The Valithors did that all the time so it couldn’t do me any harm… no one would know.

I pull the boy down a narrow alleyway, trying to lose the shadow, but it keeps following me. I don’t know who it is, and every time I glance around nothing is there. Byron keeps screaming for no reason, pointing at shadows on the floor, stars in the sky. I don’t understand what he’s trying to tell me. Silera told me he had a connection to the universes and could see things others couldn’t, but this was just getting on my nerves. Every second something was wrong, I just couldn’t handle this. The boy had to get a grip on life.

Unless something was there… Something I couldn’t see. Unless someone had found out what had happened, and was now coming to take me to the place of nightmares.

***

I bolted away, breathing heavily, my hands in fists. I heard the sound of chuckling and turned to see Ryan staring at me. He smiled and in a moment of relief, I launched myself onto him and hugged him.

“You’re alive!” I cried as he hugged me tightly back.

“Nah, I’m a ghost,” he teased.

I slapped his chest gently, “I seriously thought you were dead out there.”

“Really? Aw, I feel loved,” He laughed, “Try to have a bit more hope in me next time.”

“Ryan, is she up yet?” Sayer shouted from outside the tent. I immediately let go of Ryan incase Sayer open the tent door.

“Nearly...” Ryan called back.

“Nearly? She either is or isn’t,” Sayer retorted.

“Yeah well, she’s neither, she’s like… awake but dead…”

“She’s dead?!”

“No, no! I meant, well… Just go away!” I covered my mouth with my hand to stop myself from laughing. Ryan rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded like ‘some people have no manners’.

Ryan crawled out of the tent, me following him. When I emerged, I immediately glanced around, trying to find one person. Sayer, Cozae, Melissa, Ianthe, Zane, Jayden and Ryan next to me. Andor was nowhere in sight. My breath got caught in my throat and I glanced around one more time, hoping I had just missed him. Again I couldn’t find him. I turned to Ryan, grabbing his sleeve gently. He looked back me in confusion.