Surviving the Palace

Chapter 2

I was looking in the flames and taking slow breaths and reaching out I touched where the flame made the air around it warm and inviting. Warm and inviting but get to close and it will burn your skin.

Drake was sitting on the other side of the fire and he was staring at me. I didn't need to look up to see his dark eyes on me. I felt them. He was trying to look past my glamour but no one could see my true face. Hell I hadn't even seen my true face since I was able to put a permanent glamour on myself. Even in sleep my glamour stayed in place. I was called Ghost by a childhood friend because I could melt into a crowd and become anyone I wanted. I could even smell like them. Only my manerisms kept the visage from being perfect.

I still walked like myself and had my non existant accent. My friend had once asked me why I turned only into plain looking people. I had returned with the fact that I thought every visage I turned into was much more beautiful than my own true face. He had asked if I was deformed and I had told him yes... I was wrong underneath the glamour. He had looked at me with pitty after that and told me I was beautiful to him. What was me was beautiful not my outsides.

I had kissed him then...

I turned away from the memorie with tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. I had to control myself bettter than this. Taking a deep breath my eyes looked up at Drake finally and his eyes were observing me. He saw my pain even if I had not looked at him. He saw the pain in the way I tensed and the way I curled in on myself. I hated that he saw this.

But he wasn't judging me. He wasn't even pittying me. He just saw it. And took it as a fact.

My uncle raised his voice as if he was not liking the fact that the man was looking at me like that. "So! Are you ready to hear your mission?"

"You can stop acting like I am oath bound to you anymore Old Man. I am bound to the girl not you. If there is a mission it must come from her lips. Not yours." His eyes never left mine and I felt a gasp of fear want to bubble up in my throat but I kept calm and I looked to my Uncle.

He saw what was in my heart but there was nothing he could do for me. Not anymore. He nodded. And I took a deep breath.

I was hugging my knees as I sat in the embrace of large roots of the tree at my back. I looked up at Drake again as he sharpened and polished his blade. He was trying to be as dangerous looking as possible. No... wait... He wasn't trying at all. He was just doing his nightly routine. Taking care of his blades. He cared not what I saw.

That was different. A man that could do something simply to do it but look like hell on wheels without even trying. I licked my lips because they were dry and my mouth felt dry and I felt tired but wide awake and nerveous as I started speaking.

"I must go into the UnderHill." I stopped as I saw a twitch of his eye and the grim set of his mouth and I then went on. "I must speak with a onvoy of the Queen...So I will need safe passage into the Underhill and into the Summerlands... my journey could very well bring me infront of the Queen... There she will choose and you will either be relinquished of your duty... or you will be damned to fufill it."

"RIA!" my uncle shouted at my last statement.

Drake looked confused and he gripped the hilt of his dagger.

"I was merely stating the truth Uncle... If I live... I will be his curse. I thought he should know before we go into the Palace..." My eyes were tired again and I reached over grabbing my blanket and laying down on the pad that my Uncle Warren had made. I laid down and sighed. "At dawn we go without my Uncle..." I felt so alone that I curled in on myself and I let my tears slowly fall as my eyes were closed. My pain in my chest seemed to make me feel cold. I shivered and I set to the task of going to sleep. I took deep breaths and I slowly fell into a shallow rest.