The rain had returned, gentler, but
still managing to melt my anger into tears.
I debated whether to go straight to
Drei or leave it until morning. The best choice, much as I hated to admit it,
was telling Drei. I prayed his wrath wouldn’t be as terrible as I imagined.
Drei was holding a mug of what I
guessed to be tea—mostly from the herbal scent floating around the
cabin—between his hands, Valetta sitting across from him at the small table in
the front room, sipping from her own cup. Both gazed up slowly.
“Yes?” Drei questioned distantly.
I couldn’t stop the tears from
coming; I had never screwed up so much in my entire life. Why hadn’t I seen
this coming?
Valetta came to me, hushing my tears,
pushing my dank hair from my face. “Is it Nick?” she asked.
I nodded, knowing it was nowhere near
what she thought it was.
“What about Nick? Did you two have a
fight?” she probed softly, a hand rubbing circles in my back for comfort.
“He’s a bounty hunter,” I whispered,
scared for my life, knowing it needed to be done. Not for myself, but for
everyone else here. Whatever solution was found, I doubted it would be extended
to me after this. I didn’t deserve it.
Drei was before me in a flash,
looking as though he wanted to shake me senseless, his face flushed and eyes
brilliantly amethyst. “What?”
I inhaled, trying not to fold under
his harsh eyes. “Nick is a bounty hunter; he just told me”.
“Why did you not listen to me?” he
thundered, shoving Valetta—my one companion in this place—away. “If you had
just trusted me, this would not have happened!”
“It would have happened anyway,
Drei,” I said, holding back my tears, but my voice cracking. “You wouldn’t
understa—you couldn’t even see I was alone;” I ran from the room.
Just outside the door, I heard
Valetta start to rip into him, so I kneeled below the window, listening.
“You had no right to yell at her in
that manner,” Valetta whispered threateningly. “She did something for herself,
which makes sense since she does so much for everyone else.”
“And what about our situation because
of this?” Drei hissed, equally hostile.
“It was going to happen sooner or
later,” she responded, reeling her anger in slightly.
“No,” Drei yelled back at her. “If I
had been able to do what needed to be done, this never would have happened.”
“No, it just might have been worse,”
Valetta replied, keeping calmer than Drei. “Abriel might have just run off by
now and wound up in a worse mess. Then you would have been in an irrevocable
moodiness.”
“That is not the issue!”
She didn’t flinch; “Drei, it
does not take an elemental to know sometimes the heart sees in people what
people are unable to see in themselves.” As she turned on a heel and
disappeared into one of the rooms, she added softly, “Why do you think we love
you?”
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