Chapter 18 - Revelation

Randen reveals the truth.

They spent the rest of the day packing, and Ania relished the quiet moments to herself. She left her Legacy Armor behind, as they had been trained, and put on leather armor that was more suited to the scouting mission ahead of them. She was going to leave her mother’s ring and her bracelet, but she felt…exposed without them. After a moment of doubt, she took the ring Skaught had given her and put it on a leather thong and let it hang around her neck. It didn’t feel the same as the others, like it was out of place. Shrugging, she put on her weapons belt, grabbed her longbow and pack and went down to the Outer Compound where Lyem was waiting with Jimande and Maldeen.

Echo walked through the hallways, knowing exactly where she needed to be, but wanting to be anywhere but there. She reached Randen’s door, and hesitated a moment before knocking. When had it come to this?

She knew the answer. It had started when she had discovered the ability she had to communicate with other Knights’ Companions. It was never as strong as the link she had with Nyllia, more like feelings, images, and disjointed sentences. But when Hakem had come to her last night and told her that Skaught had proposed and Ania hadn’t given him a definite answer, she had known what she had to do.

Knocking on the door, Echo waited for Randen to open it, and then walked in without even saying hello. She stalked to the center of his room and turned to face him. He paused at the look on her face. “Is something�"?”

“You have to tell her, Randen. You have to tell her before you get back.”

He paled. “I don’t know…”

“Know what? If you actually love her? Well, I can tell you this much. She doesn’t know if she loves Skaught. I asked her if he made her happy and she could barely string two words together. She didn’t know what to say.”

“But…Why now? Can’t I wait�"?”

“Wait for what? Her to be gone forever? Because if you wait any longer, she will be.”

“What?”

“That scum ball of a prince asked her to marry him. She didn’t answer, but unless you give her a reason not to, she’s going to say yes.”

This time, Randen’s face turned red with rage. “He did what? Who does he think he is?”

“He thinks he loves her, and that she loves him. She hasn’t even told him about the Legacy thing, even though he probably already knows. The thing is, she doesn’t hold him in high enough confidence to tell him things like that. She trusts you. She always has.

“That girl is scared. She doesn’t know what she feels. She’s confused, conflicted, and who knows what else. If you let her marry that slime ball, I don’t think she’ll ever be the same. The part of her that we all love will break, most likely never to come back. If you let her heart die because you were nervous, so help me, I will…” She let out a breath, suddenly very tired. “I don’t know what I’ll do.” She looked up at him, and she felt her eyes fill with tears. “Don’t you dare let that happen to her. When you get back, I expect her eyes to be opened for the first time in eight years. However it may end, I want her to know what it feels like to actually be loved by someone.

Randen stood there, unable to speak. He was so scared. He didn’t want to tell Ania what he felt, only to have her shatter his heart by rejecting him. She had done it once by ignorance, and it had felt like a thousand red-hot knives stabbed into his chest.

If she did it again, knowing this time the deepest longings of his heart, knowing everything he had desperately wanted to tell her since the moment they had met, he didn’t think he would survive it.

But even as he stood there, he thought about her as she had been on the night of the coronation, in that amazing dress that made her look more beautiful than any queen could ever look to him. And how she had been the day they had been named, how she had seemed to glow with happiness.

And the day they had met. How she had saved him from his own mind, and then drawn Aimon and Echo to them with that incredible power she had that made people want to know her. That light in her eyes… It made her beautiful to him.

Could he ever forgive himself if he was the reason it went out?

Looking up through misted eyes, he nodded. “I’ll do it.” In his mind, he added, I have to.

Echo let out a breath that seemed to deflate her, robbing her of every ounce of energy she had. He sat her down on his bed, grabbed his pack and walked out. He let a passing Aimon know where she was, and then all but ran down to the Outer Compound to where she was waiting.

 

.:*:.:*:.:*:.

 

They had been travelling for day, riding towards the black forest that formed the natural border between Koronea and Jocona. Ania had been able to use some of her mother's maps to find shelters along the way, but occasionally they had to make their own. When that happened, Ania would go out and set traps for their dinner while Randen prepared their campsite. By the end of the day, both of them were so exhausted that they both collapsed to the ground to eat a warm meal. Ania would always ask Randen if he wanted her to take the first watch, but he always asked to take it.

After she fell asleep, using her pack as a pillow, he would send Trissta to keep an eye out for anything suspicious, and, against any and all training he had ever had, spend most of his watch staring at her sleeping form, trying to come up with something to say to her. When it was time for him to relinquish the watch to her, he would go over and gently wake her, relishing the sight of her coming awake. She seemed so peaceful, without a care in the world. She would smile wryly up at him, asking if it was her watch. He would nod, and then fall asleep himself with the image of her smile in his dreams.

And then, one day almost a week after they had left, they crested a hill and saw, through a break in the trees, the Diamond Lakes of Je BlizteFälle. They sparkled in the dying light, looking every inch the part.

As they watched, the sun began its descent and the violent red and orange rays hit the water and were reflected back like a thousand million rubies. They stood there in awe as the sky and water burned with the light of a hundred roses. Randen tossed a quick look at Ania, and was stunned to see a small smile�"that one that he loved so much�"accompanied with gentle tears.

That night, after a warm and filling dinner of a few rabbits that had fallen victim to Hakem's teeth and Ania's longbow, Randen sat back against a tall pine tree. “So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” She started, and he could tell she was about to deny it, so, against his better nature, stopped her before she could even get a word out. “Don’t try to deny it. You were crying at the Lakes, and smiling at the same time. That is not a natural combination for ‘alright,’ so don’t try to convince me otherwise.”

She sighed, and spoke in a voice that belied her emotional exhaustion. “The Diamond Lakes were the sight of the Battle of Je BlizteFälle in the last Joconan Invasion. That’s where…It’s where my mother died. Standing there, I could only imagine how she would have stood there, looking at the Lakes, maybe even as she was dying, and thinking how beautiful it looked. It’s how her mind worked. I felt closer to her, closer than anything I’ve felt since she died, and I just…I couldn’t help but think what she would think of what I’ve gone and done.”

“What did you do?”

“Echo came and talked to me, and at the end of it, I couldn’t help but think of how my mother described the night my father proposed, and how she felt. I couldn’t help but think of that, and then…” She squeezed her eyes shut, letting a few gentle tears slide down, “And then compare it to my own experience.”

He said the words that had plagued him since Echo had told him about it. “Skaught proposed, then?” She nodded, unable to speak. “What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. I said I needed time to think about it. But the thing is, I don’t know if there’s enough time in the entire universe to think through what is in my heart right now. That’s kind of why I wanted to bring you along on this scouting mission. You always seem to know what to say to help me feel better.” Randen snorted a laugh. He couldn’t even say three short words to someone he adored. “I just…I don’t under stand what it is I feel for Skaught. It started out like any other childhood infatuation, I guess. I got really giddy and nervous around him. I wanted to look just right. It wasn’t that complicated.

“But then I started actually spending time with him, and it changed. It was like I couldn’t think straight when I was near him. All my emotions got wrapped up in a cocoon, and all the bad ones got pushed to the back of my mind. I’ve started thinking of it like a kind of drug. It feels like it fixes everything at the time, but just makes everything worse by forcing you to deal with it all at once. Echo was right when she called it an addiction.”

By now she was really crying. Randen came over next to her, holding her head to his shoulder as she sobbed. “I don’t know what I feel, Randen. Please, help me… I don’t even know what to think!”

Randen took a deep breath. This was it.

He turned her to face him, his heart wrenching to see her tear-stained face. “Ania, I have something to tell you. It’s a story that I think will help you figure things out. But you have to promise me that you won’t say anything until I’m done. You have to let me finish be fore you say anything. Promise?” She nodded, too confused and upset to say anything anyway.

“This is the story of a young boy that was scared. He was scared of something he thought was just too big and important for him to do. He was ready to quit when along came a girl that helped him understand that he wasn’t doing anything scary. He was just keeping a promise. She kept him from running away, kept him from breaking the promise. But when he tried to thank her, she didn’t understand, just brushing it off as another thing she did because that’s who she was. She didn’t understand how important she was to him, didn’t understand…he was falling in love with her.”

He met Ania’s gaze, the serious look in his eyes keeping her from speaking. He let his eyelids slide closed as he began reliving the worst and best years of his life. “The boy waited for an opportunity, and thought he had found it when her birthday came along. He spent months making her a present that would tell her everything. But when he went to give it to her, a prince that was everything she could ever want came and stole her from the boy. He threw the present away, but somehow she got it anyway. She loved it, the way she would never love the boy.

“But he still had hope. They danced together, and he thought he had a chance to tell her. He picked her a bunch of her favorite flowers, just the way she liked them, and waited for her to finish talking to her prince. But the prince stole her again, and she said three words that broke the boy’s heart. She said she loved the prince, and the boy tried to run away again.

“He couldn’t, though, because that would belittle what the girl had done for him all those years ago. So he stayed, and stayed hidden as he watched the prince start to change the girl he loved. She didn’t laugh as much, and her smile was different. He didn’t like it. It made him sad. But she seemed happy. So he was happy for her.

“Because when she was happy, it was like the sun came up for him. The light of a thousand worlds shone out of her eyes when she smiled, and songs of a thousand choirs played when she laughed. He never told her, because he didn’t want her to break his heart again. Because this time it would be on purpose. She would do it knowing how he felt. He could forgive her the first times. She didn’t know. But this time she would.

“And so he waited, waited for a chance he was certain would never come. But suddenly, she started crying again because the prince had asked her a question that she didn’t know the answer to, didn’t know if the three words she had spoken before were actually true. And so she left for a while, and took the boy with her, because she knows he can make her feel better.

“And so here she sits. In front of the boy that loves her more than anything in the world. The question is, Ania…”

He looked up to see her beautiful blue eyes looking at him. She was crying again, and he could feel tears running down his own cheeks. “Do you love me?”

She had to struggle to speak past the lump in her throat. “When I’m around you, nothing seems as bad. My problems seem easier because I know you’re here to help me. Everything’s brighter around you. The flowers are more colorful. The sky seems bluer. Everything is better around you. It always has been.

“You laugh, and I can’t help but feel better. You smile, and it makes me want to smile. You cry, and I want to figure out what’s wrong.” Looking into his storm blue-grey eyes, Ania whispered, “You gave me this, didn’t you?” She held up her arm, letting the silvery gold bracelet dangle from her wrist. As he nodded, she looked to the little ruby heart. Somehow, she wasn’t that surprised to see the cracks fading. If she was healing one heart, it made sense the other would follow. “I always loved this heart. I don’t think I could possible break it again.” She took a deep breath. This was it.

“Randen, I have always loved you. I loved you the first day we met, I love you now. I’m just sorry it took me this long to figure out what was love and what was desperation.” And with that statement, she leaned forward and kissed Randen, feeling and tasting the salty tears on his face.

There was no onslaught of emotion, no waves of power. It started as a gentle warmth around her heart, and it grew, blooming like a rose, until it filled every inch of her body. It didn’t grow in heat, merely in size. It felt wonderful to be next to him like this, feeling the strength of his arms as he reached around her in the same gentle embrace that he had always given her.

Breaking apart, she laid her head on his shoulder. This felt so…right. “I love you. Don’t ever let that change.”

“Don’t worry. I promise I will always love you.”

He was about to kiss her again when the world shattered, and in the aftermath, more than one heart fell torn and bleeding, yet still beating, from the battlefield.