Yuragwyn: Ours

---Chapter 1

A/N-- Hey everyone!  This is the sequel to Yours, so if you haven't read that, start there :)  Thank you so much for reading!  Comment, vote, and share! 

Samantha Gabrielle Morgan <3

∞Kaitra∞

My father's words are a rude slap to my tear-stained face and a shard of guilt in my overfull heart at the same time. They reverberate in my head: You belong there, dear Daughter of Yuragwyn. had so longed to forget everything I had just experienced and live a normal, safe life.

"How do you know about that?" I whisper, pulling away from him. The tears fall afresh.

My father's eyes are heavy-laden with sadness, as are my mother's. I refuse their touch and only stare back at them, waiting for an answer. How could they have known? Do they believe it too? The thought racks me, and I can't even bear the idea. My own parents, my own parents— they could never be caught up in this lie! Surely I have heard them wrong; perhaps the world-jumping has messed with my head.

"Remember, Kaitra, when we gave the dagger to you, and we told you that it had been waiting for you all these years?" My mother says. She tries to pat my head, but I duck away from her gentle fingers. "Master Hulderic gave it to you when we brought you here. It was meant to return you, so you could fulfill the words of old. He always knew, I think, that you were the one, even though he never told your parents that outright and only advised you be kept very safe until you were older."

"You know about Yuragwyn? You would let me, your daughter, fall back into the war and mess going on there because of some prophesy about me saving them? Mom, I had to travel from Cordina through Entel to Granziar largely on foot, with a pack so heavy it nearly knocked me over. Master Hulderic sent me with three near strangers to the capital city of his worst enemy with a sliver of hope that we four could do what a whole country couldn't. Naturally, we got caught. Dad, they threw me in a dungeon! How could giving me that dagger have been a good idea? There are so many ways I could have died." I choke on my words and have to grab onto the recliner I spent so many games of tickle tag behind to keep from falling over. My head is throbbing with the pain and dehydration, and my burns, aggravated by my tight grip on my father when I first came back, rub against the scratchy cloth. My vision narrows as I remember all the times I nearly lost my life: the River Rapha, when Traugott and I fell all the way to the bottom to avoid enemy arrows, the plains of Quieve, when we were nearly ambushed by hundreds of Granzian soldiers, or the dungeons of Pon, when we spent every moment wondering if we were going to be executed. Looking back, I shouldn't even be here. How am I still here?

"It was, Kaitra! We agreed when we came that we would send you back when the time was right. Our fault was not telling you what you were getting into. I'm sorry Kaitra, so sorry that we didn't have the nerve to tell you about your home. We failed Lord Cadfael and Lady Carys. We should have told their daughter about her own parents," my father says, emotion thickly lacing his voice. His own tears plow through the very beginning of wrinkles on his cheeks. "We love you, Kaitra, we really do, but we aren't your parents. You belong in Yuragwyn with them."

My mother brings me a glass of iced tea and a biscuit and I slump into the chair and devour them both. I cannot even comprehend what they tell me; I don't want to. I must put Yuragwyn aside and rest. Maybe they will be able to sort out their difficulties without me. Truthfully it will be much easier that way. I shut my eyes tight against my last memory with Traugott, the way he set his arm on mine and pleaded with me to come back. I heard Calanthe's voice in the rustle of the old white oak when I returned, begging me to save them. Can I pretend not to have heard that?