The Seduction Plan Ch. 08

I nodded.

He watched me for a long moment, then, I think the part of Bolthos that hated all this, decided to let it go. He walked off toward the water. The second he was out of sight – "Do it, Dartix," I said.

"What?" he asked.

"The spell!"

"Oh, oh yeah," he sputtered. While he quickly tried to remember the words, I began the protection spell. He started whispering his spell into the chains closest to his face. For a full minute, it seemed like nothing was happening.

Then the fire went out.

Dartix froze, midspell, surprised.

I started chanting my spell louder, hoping he'd catch the drift that he wasn't supposed to stop. He did, and continued.

"Dor!" called Bolthos, from the river. I guess he could tell the fire was gone.

I began to feel the change. The chains were warming, and they felt different wrapped around us. The metal began to glow. I couldn't feel the heat, but I felt the way the protection spell felt bowed in against me, knowing there was something harmful on the other side.

The chains were losing their shape, melting on our bodies, but we couldn't feel their heat. Finally a couple of them dripped apart.

Bolthos was coming back up from the river. I could hear him.

Dartix stood, shaking the molten metal off of himself. He helped me to my feet; he could stop his spell because it was clear we were free, but I had to keep chanting because the metal was still hot and on our clothing. He wiped the metal off me, and I tried to do the same.

Bolthos was in sight now. He got one look at us, and stared a moment, then ran toward us.

Dartix grabbed my hand and we ran into the woods.

The dark woods.

Have I mentioned that I'm not a fan of heavily wooded areas? It was light enough out under the full moon, but that didn't make me graceful. Dartix nimbly leapt through the brush, and I stumbled like an idiot. Bolthos barreled through after us.

He was catching up with us, and we didn't know where we were going anyway. Dartix yanked hard on my arm to hurry me, and I stumbled, getting stabbed in the arm by a sharp stick that came with me as we continued. I removed the stick from arm, feeling like I was going to be sick all over myself at the sensation of this foreign object pulling at the inside of my skin, ripping painfully as we ran awkwardly through the woods.

I moved to throw it away, and then thought about spell that had just worked.

I modified the words I used on my daggers, and let the stick go behind me.

Bolthos screamed, and I paused to look.

Dartix kept pulling on my hand, but I had to see.

Bolthos was on the ground, the stick jutting out of his leg just above the knee. My first instinct was to make sure he was alright.

"Princess! Saymar is coming," Dartix reminded me.

I nodded. "Yeah, yeah. You're right."

We turned and left Bolthos in the darkness.

Neither Dartix nor I spoke again until the grey of almost morning began to make the darkness grainy and wet. Fog clouded the ground, and colors appeared in patches as we walked. I told Dartix about the Master. –About Eric.

"But... But Dor, how could you... not have known?"

I was silent for a moment. That was the question I had been asking.

"I never thought about it much, I guess."

"I don't understand. How...?"

"Dartix, he's my best friend." Dartix looked at me funny when I said that, but I shook my head and continued. "For the last decade I've spent every waking moment planning to kill him. If I had bothered to look into things, to question him... what if what he said changed my mind? What if he had been exactly what I thought he was, and he explained himself? What would I do? What if the explanation was so good that it was enough to convince me to stop trying? So many times I wanted to stop trying. I couldn't take any more convincing. Or worse, what if the explanation was terrible? What if I couldn't even love him anymore? What would I have had left? Nothing."

Dartix was quiet for a while. He was thinking. Then, "I never thought about it like that, Princess. I never thought you'd be friends. I always sort of imagined you as a servant in his palace, somebody he'd ignore or maybe yell at a lot. But, that doesn't even make sense the more I think about it. Of course he'd be friends with you. You're great. You're the best person I know. And with you stuck there and nobody with you most of the time, of course a person trying to be your friend would end up being your friend, even if you meant to hate him. I didn't think about the position you were in. That must have been awful."

"It wasn't a walk in the park."

Dartix smiled. "Was it a night in the park, running from enemies?"

"This is so not a park, Dartix," I laughed looking around. "This is the Nature. I hate it."

"Used to be a park," Dartix said, looking around.

"What? How can you tell?"

He nodded, off to our right. I looked and saw the top of a high wall hidden by trees. "It's Kedmirl Castle. ...What's left of it."

My jaw dropped.

It was home.

My feet were carrying me in its direction before I knew what was happening.

I heard Dartix behind me, sounding anxious, "I wasn't sure if I should point it out or not. Are you okay, Dor?"

I was climbing the small stones between trees, hands getting wet on the rocks. I began to really see it then – the wall, and I thought I could remember which one it was. I hurried; I don't know why, it was like I had forgotten that my family wouldn't be inside. I had forgotten that it wasn't my home and that I wouldn't be safe there with my father and mother and siblings and guards and servants. I had forgotten that all I had left in the world was Eric and now perhaps Dartix, and neither of them were inside the castle.

I reached the wall and almost shocked that I couldn't just walk through it, suddenly realized I'd have to go around. I ran alongside it – yes, I was running now, Dartix close behind. We came to the corner. I knew that just around it I'd find an entrance.

I turned.

And fell.

The sight knocked my feet out from under me.

...

Slowly I realized Dartix was sitting beside me, a hand on my shoulder. "I don't remember it like this. The Master's army..."

"Nah, Princess. This wasn't the Master. This was people. People over the years with nothing better to do."

The castle had been ransacked – entire walls taken away. It now resembled a cave, a ruin. The wall we had seen, well it was the last one left somewhat whole. Mossy overgrowth barely covered the evidence of long lost bonfires held in the mess. My childhood home was a scab on the earth.

I wanted Eric.

"Don't cry, Dor!" Dartix said.

"I'm not crying," I said, wiping my nose. "I'm thinking. Sometimes I think so hard it makes my eyes run. You have to help me with a spell."

"Sure, Princess," Dartix said, pulling me into a hug.