War of Shadows

An Olive Branch

Chapter 17

I stare out of my bedroom window, my knees curled to my chest to shield me from the breeze whispering into the room. I’m unaware of how much time has passed since I left the private dining room and locked myself in the room, but I am aware of the fact that I can’t let my emotions cloud my judgment. Eli is selling me out, there’s no doubt about it. But a little voice inside of me is telling me that there’s more to the story, that maybe I should hear him out. The only information about the situation is gathered through spies, surely not ones that have a personal relationship with him and which he would confide in.

Still, the hope I cling to is small and quickly diminishing. He could easily find me on his own without his father knowing about it. If Eren already knows that Eli is going to track me down, then how exactly does Eli plan on working around that? Deep down, I’ve already acknowledged that nobody can be trusted at face value and that I very well might have been played like a fiddle.

I’m ripped back into reality when a large black bird clumsily settles in my window frame. He eyes me with his glassy beads, the moon casting silver and blue tints to his silky feathers. I know this bird. Could it be the same bird from before? Could he have followed me?

I slowly push myself off of the cushioned chair and move hesitantly toward the bird. He’s bigger up close, roughly the size of my arm. He doesn’t move as I get closer.

“Hey little friend,” I coo quietly.

My foot makes a noise against the floor and the bird starts, flapping away from the castle until it’s blended into the glittering night sky.

I settle back into my seat with a frustrated hmph.

I feel like I’m losing it. I’m sure it’s not the same one from the docks and the forest, that’s not possible.

I need to get some fresh air.

Grabbing a jacket off of the desk chair and, shoving my feet inside a pair of boots, I head to the door of my room and push it open. I nearly jump out of my skin when I find Caziel leaned against the wall adjacent to me, His beard neatly trimmed and his head resting on the wall with his eyes closed before he jerks straight up as soon as he hears the door open, eyes scanning me from top to bottom.

He moves toward me, a hand on the sword at his hip.

“Calm down, guard dog, I’m just going for a walk.”

Caziel stares daggers at me and swings his arm toward the end of the hall. “After you, your highness.”

I narrow my eyes. “Alone.”

“Were you not paying attention when we told you that you’re being hunted like game? You’re not going anywhere alone.”

A thought occurs to me. “Don’t you sleep?”

“I’m on night duty.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

Caziel sighs deeply, signs of fatigue lining his face. “Stella, please.”

“I’m just saying, you look exhausted. How about you just take a nap and I’ll wake you up when I get back? I won’t tattletale, scout’s honor.” I cross my heart in emphasis.

“Or how about we take a nice, quiet stroll and I return you back to your chambers.”

Giving up on the fight, I walk down the hall confident that Caziel follows at a short distance behind me.

After a while of taking random turns and stairs trying to find the exit into the gardens, I frustratedly give up and turn back toward my room and ignore Caziel’s smirk when I pass him.

“Going back so soon? Doesn’t seem like a very refreshing walk to me,” he mocks from behind me.

If he keeps talking to me, I might have to jumpstart our combat training in this hallway. “Can we just… call a truce for 10 more minutes?”

“Where are you trying to go?”

“Nowhere.”

Silence falls once again.

“Follow me,” his voice fades as he dips down a different hallway and I turn around to follow. With him in the lead, I find myself at a brisk walk to keep up with him.

“Caziel, if you’re taking me back to start training I might actually kill you.”

Caziel whips around and I stop walking. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say that to me ever again, do you hear me?” Caziel stops a breath away from me, his breathing even but an emotion in his eyes I haven’t seen from him yet. I feel my cheeks flush with humiliation, but there’s a wild look in his eyes that tells me those words hit him in a very tender spot.

“Why?” He’s done this before, snapping out of nowhere at something I’ve said.

Caziel eyes me for a moment before turning on his heel and leading us down a couple flights of stairs. As we make it to a grand, open room with steel doors, his hand pauses on the door handle for a moment before he pushes it open, his shoulder straining against his black tack shirt.

The doors open straight into the garden beneath my room. Although the air is still too cold for half of the flowers to bloom, the dark greens and reds of the trees and surviving foliage along the slender, curving walkway take my breath away. Light green spouts of bulbed flowers reach out from the dark earth, greedy to be the first to greet the spring sun. Along the walkway leading into the maze sits a line of towering poles with lanterns hooked on top, offering a soft and soothing yellow glow. At the entrance of the wide maze, the skeletons of crisply trimmed hedges tower on either side, spotted with green specks of foliage on the twiggy branches.

“The rest should start blooming soon,” Caziel reassures as I step past him, brushing against him slightly more than I would have liked to.

“It’s still beautiful.”

“This is my favorite part of the castle grounds, you know. This place is still kind of hidden from the rest of the palace. It’s good, I suppose, that it’s not constantly being trampled and marred by visitors and guests. Not many people come to this one.” He slightly shakes his head as he surveys the gardens before us.

I don’t have any words to say in response to Caziel opening up a little bit and allowing me to see a deeper side of him. I find myself wanting to hear more, maybe because I’m lonely and the idea of having a friend is a lot more comforting than I’d like to admit. I swallow a scoff at the idea of Caziel and I being friends. To each other, we’re both insufferable pests.

“How did you know I wanted to come here?”

Caziel shrugs and stalks over to a glass bench and takes a seat. “Wasn’t really much to choose from, I figured the only peaceful place you knew to escape to would be the one just outside your window.”

“Lucky guess, then,” I muse. I let out a breathy laugh. “Look at us, getting along for more than five seconds.”

Caziel doesn’t smile or entertain my jab, yet a glimmer shines in his eyes. “I come here when I get overwhelmed.”

“You think I’m overwhelmed?”

“You tell me.”

I pull the jacket tighter around my shoulders and dig my boot into the gravel.

“I think you’ve been sheltered and protected your whole life, and you’ve never had a taste of the real world.” Caziel stands and walks closer to me.

I feel a fire ignite in me, daring me to put his foot in his mouth. “You know nothing-”

“I also think,” he interrupts, “that fate has compensated for that in horrific ways, all in such a short amount of time. You’re so young, Stella, to have carried everything that’s happened all on your own.”

“I’m fine.” I hold his gaze defiantly.

“You’re not,” he responds softly. There’s no trace of the cocky, power-hungry captain of the army in the man standing in front of me now, but I refuse to let my guard down.

“Why did you bring me here? You could have just let me go back to my room so you wouldn’t be stuck throwing a pity party.”

His gaze hardens a fraction. “I want you to be prepared. The others don’t mean to catch you off guard but tomorrow they’re going to request something from you.”

“Like what?”

“You need to reject Eli and remove the mark.”

I stare at him wide eyed, catching my thoughts. Reject Eli? It would be a logical thing to do, sure, but the thoughts of losing my last string of hope makes my stomach churn.

“Caziel, I-That’s not even possible.”

Caziel holds firm and nods his head. “We have a very powerful friend that has done it before… It will annul the bond completely.”

“I can’t.”

What if Eli never meant to harm me, and he has a bigger plan? What if erasing the bond will be pointless in the end?

“I know what you’re thinking, and I can assure you that the consequences of leading him right to you are not worth taking the chance. You aren’t worth taking the chance. When this is all over, if you two still choose each other without the bond, then it will work out. If you choose him in the end, then he’ll be yours. For the time being, however, we are very limited on our options. There’s still much you don’t know about, but you play a very significant role in saving a lot of lives, Stella. We can’t make any gambles on who our allies are right now when it comes to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I promise I will tell you anything you want to know. I just need you to understand that the bond needs to be erased for the time being.”

For the time being. A heavy, pregnant pause fills the air between us.

“I’ll do it.”

“Stella,” Caziel looks like he decides against whatever he was about to say. “I’m sorry.”

“Take me back to my room, please. I’m tired.”

Caziel nods and opens the castle door for me.

The walk back to my room is long and quiet. My heart weighs heavy in my chest, but my gut is telling me that it’s the right thing to do. Will he forgive me? Who’s to say he’ll even feel anything for me at all after the bond is erased? Then again, who’s to say there was really anything there to begin with?

There are more important things to worry about, and I have to keep reminding myself that this might be more than myself. I need, no deserve to know everything. I’m tired of being in the dark, hiding and acting trying to convince myself that this is all just a very dark and twisted dream. It’s not. This is my reality, and I need to pull it together and take charge before I open a door that lets someone else use me for their own agenda. If Caziel was telling the truth, then plenty of people have something to gain by taking advantage of me and bending me to their own will. I need all the information so I can think and make decisions on my own.

As we near my door, I turn to Caziel. “Caziel?”

He stops behind me with a blank expression.

“Caziel I… I’m going out on a limb here, but you didn’t have to warn me about destroying my bond tomorrow, but you did.”

“What are you getting at?”

I really pray that I’m not extending an olive branch to the wrong person. “I need a friend.”

“A friend? Stella I’m your guard, I’m not your friend.”

“Not my friend because you don’t want to, or because you shouldn’t?”

“I don’t want to be your friend, Stella.”

Ouch. “I don’t get you, Caziel. One moment you’re being…kind, and the next you’re back to hating me for whatever reason that you refuse to acknowledge.”

He gestures to the door behind me. “You need your rest, your highness.”

“Don’t tell me what I need.”

With a slam of my bedroom door, I walk straight to my bed and shove that safe in my mind shut as tight as I possibly can.

I feel that same stirring of that something else in the recess of my being, curiously peaking an eye open. It stirs, ready to wake up.