The Keys: A Tale of a Beginning and End

Chapter twenty three

Old man Patric came in while we were in the middle of our fight, I turned at just the right time, the expression on his face was priceless. I was about to point it out when a pillow came crashing into my face, causing me to fall backwards onto the floor, but I wasn't going down by myself. Whoever hit me was coming down as well, I grabbed onto their arm and pulled making them stumble and fall. I didn't think it through, they ended up on top of me, and I nearly suffocated, their pillow was still pressed against my face, preventing their head from colliding with mine.

After an agonizing 5 minutes, I was standing up, Zander was the one who had landed on top of me, he had removed the pillow and mumbled an apology. It was kind of awkward afterward and I didn't quite understand why, we worked in silence picking up our mess mainly because we felt bad about it. I noticed Zander glancing at, me ever now and then but he stayed away, Rosalind was humming quietly, she seemed to have recovered from the previous night.

It took us about half an hour to finish fixing everything, and when we were done Patric told us that he came to inform us that we had to leave at sun down and that they would provide us with food, blankets and horses. They gave us clean clothes, thankfully they took back their ball gowns and armor, they gave me a dull green crop top that was also a sweatshirt, it was a lot like the one I wore during my trial. Instead of changing my pants, I kept on my ripped gray pants, there was no way I was getting rid of those, we'd been through to much.

Zander had disappeared before dinner was to start, and I went to go look for him. We were still in the hidden village, and it would be nearly impossible to find him with all the passages, luckily I did find him. He was sitting in their library, or what they called a library, it was three walls filled from top to bottom with books, that might sound impressive but in reality the room was smaller than the bedrooms they allowed us to stay in. The room was 18 feet in width and was 12 feet in hight, it was sad to see such a small library, if anything it was a book room. If I every got the throne back I would give them an actual library, they deserve that and more for helping us.

There was a single table in the center with two wooden chairs, there was a couch and a ladder used to climb up and down to get books from the very top shelf. They put very little effort into making it feel welcoming, if anything it would be the best place to hide from people, which was exactly what Zander was doing.

He just sat at the table staring off into space, he was so lost in thought that he didn't even look up to see that someone had entered. I pulled one of the wooden chairs out from the table, the sound of it dragging on the floor snapped him out of his trance. I placed the chair next to him and sat down, he just starred at me, I started to feel uncomfortable and self conscious, feeling the blood rush up to my cheeks, I looked away. I never felt uncomfortable around him before I don't know why I did, all of a sudden I jumped he was holding my hand, just as he was opening his mouth to say something Rosalind threw open the doors and ran in. She looked panicked and as we stood up she yelled "WE NEED TO GO NOW!"