Roseblood

Eleven

I slump into Brooke's room, barely able to keep my eyes open. In my hand is nothing but a piece of paper. At first glance it's not much, but this parchment is now something that I will only give up over my dead body.

"How much amber?" Brooke asks from his bed as I struggle to shut the heavy stone door behind me. His head—now with a more natural black tipping the ends—is bent over something.

Probably his jewel-hoarding list, Elang groans. He's not a fan of doing this either.

I walk over to the Waveblood prince and thrust the paper under his nose. "There are five-hundred-and-sixty-two of them," I answer. My arm itches and I clench my fists to suppress the urge to scratch it. 

Brooke's sharp eyes notice. "Is it still bothering you?"

It never stopped, says Elang.

"A little," I answer.

"You mean 'a lot,' right? It's only been a week; there's no way that you feel better already."

I nod, not even trying to deny it. These last couple of days have been nothing but stressful for me and Elang. It started with the night that bear attacked me—the longest night of my life. It was all one big, stretched out blur buffeted by pain and anger and weariness. I know that my arm was tended to and that Elang had managed to escape a fiery death, which was enough for me. The next morning, Adam insisted that we walk back to Fort Stone, despite the state of everyone's mental state.

🍃  🍃  🍃

From the moment we left, it had been torture for me. Adam, quoting that I still needed training—even now I'm still curious as to what. Physical? Mental? My Roseblood power? Most likely all of it—questioned me on everything from the bear attack to how I spent my days back at home. Occasionally Aura and Brooke would pop up with trivial questions, like what kind of tree that was or how long ago this happened. The worst part of it was how I didn't know such seemingly simple questions. It was embarrassing, to say the least.

When we arrived at Fort Stone, that was when the physical "training" began. I wasn't ready to lift my arm, never mind hold a weapon. But the heirs, Aura and Adam especially, didn't seem to care. The decided that every day I would go with one of three to practice a skill.

Tomorrow I'm to be with Adam for the second time. My first session—if it could be called that—was a disaster. The Sparkblood prince put me through a handful of long and hard Strongboy Dilemas. Each time he retold the story, I fell asleep sooner than the time before.

Needless to say, I was eccentric to leave him.

Aura's visit wasn't nearly as terrible; the Airblood princess gave me knives to study. Not to throw or fight with, but to observe. Her exact words were "Just look at them, Rosy. Feel around, but don't get the hilts all sweaty."

And finally, there was Brooke. I thought that going to him would easier, and it was in the beginning. The first thing he did was give me a candle and open the stone door in his room. He told me that he needed help taking inventory of the multitude of jewels down there, and that he would be with me in a few minutes. Instead, he closed the door with me on the inside.

It took less than a second for me to hyperventilate. I slammed my body against the wall, wanting so desperately to get out of this tunnel, out of the dark, away from the threat of more people like Sey.

"Calm yourself, Pele," I heard from the other side of the wall. "Use your gift to move the stone. You can do it, I know you can, if you just calm yourself."

Despite the kind words, it still took me a forever to put aside my fear and muster up the strength to pull back the wall. Stone wasn't easy to work with, and by the time I was finished opening and closing the way to the secret hall, I was too tired to even stand.

As I dropped to the ground, Brooke had smiled at me with approval. "You did great, Pele. Now get ready to go back in. We're going to keep a record of what's down there."

At that time I felt like I was going to faint for the nth time that week.

🍃  🍃  🍃

"Next time I have you, you can just rest," Brooke says, snapping me out of my miserable week reflection. "You look worse and worse every day." He doesn't say this with an attitude or bitterness, but I still get a little offended from it.

"It's just..." I start. "Why do I have to be put through all this stuff? What's up with the trials and tests? Am I really so out-of-sorts that I need a crazy training schedule? I've already been through enough with the bear attack."

Which feels worst every day, Elang points out.

True.

"You're not as weak as you think you are, Pele," Brooke says. Then his eyes catch on to my bandaged limb. "You could have lost it, your arm. Or you could be dead. It's fortunate for you that you have such a gift that allows you to communicate in situations like these. You're overreacting. Calm yourself."

I ignore Brooke's ever constant mantra. As if calming myself is going to fix any of this. It won't get me home any faster, or fix my arm, or drive away the continuous curtain of emotions hanging over me.

I need to get out of here, Elang suddenly says. I'm hungry.

It dawns on me that the only food we all have is what we've brought ourselves or from the mysteriously unseen maid I saw when I first came in. Come to think of it, she hasn't made herself seen since then.

You want to go hunting? I ask.

Obviously.

"So...I guess we're done speaking," Brooke interrupts.

"What do you mean?"

"We haven't spoken in a few minutes. And besides, I can tell when you two are speaking."

"How?" Is it obvious? I hope it isn't. I think about all those times I've spent talking to Elang while someone else was speaking to me.

"Your pupils get bigger," he answers. "Only slightly, though, and you have a habit of tilting your head to the side."

Creep.

Elang! Though it is a little weird for someone to pay that much attention to me.

Looks like someone has a crush on you, my hawk says.

"What!" I blurt out.

Brooke perks up immediately. "Pele? What happened? What is it?"

I question copy shake my head, feeling a heavy blush rise up. "Oh, it's n-nothing. I just... I, um, just remembered something."

"Was it important?"

"Uhh, no." Mother Earth, I'm sweating now. "But, um, I should probably get started on it now. Like, at this moment."

Geez, get yourself together.

Oh, he's having too much fun with this. Positive that my body is a hundred degrees and completely flushed, I turn and hurry out of Brooke's room. Elang pokes fun and teases me while I scurry over the short distance that separates my room from the Waveblood prince's. I open the door in a rush—

And see Adam leaning against my bed.