My Dear Traitor

Episode 3

As he shook his head at me in exasperation and rolled his eyes, something in the distance caught his attention as his glance skipped out across the water. Over my shoulder, a large cloud suddenly passed before the sun, dimming its radiant light. He registered something in the distance, and those bright eyes widened slightly.

I felt a trickle of fear skip down my spine. “What is it?” I asked as I turned slightly.

But I didn’t need to hear his answer. If I was having trouble believing my eyes, my ears were able to help confirm the scene before me as the warning bells of the watchtower from the city began to clang loudly. I gasped as the shouting of many men was able to penetrate through the increasingly strong wind to our position.

What had just been a peaceful moment almost equivalent to the feeling of an embrace was now a splash of ice water in the face in the middle of winter. The waves that had enveloped me in strength when I was weak and the wind that had caressed the tears from my face after my parents died were now traitorously bringing foreign, strange ships towards us impossibly quickly.

Pulling me out of my surprised trance and literally pulling me up the packed sand, pass the shifting sandy hills, to where the beach met the path to the city, my brother towed me to the wall around our city, shouting orders to the men who were beginning to assemble on the ramparts above.

“Elwin, there is no way their ships are able to sail that quickly!” I panted as we pushed along with the crowd flocking through the city gates.

“And yet, sister, somehow they are almost to our shores.”

We shared a quick, silent look as we passed into the safety of the city walls. Dread lanced through my stomach at the flash of fear I saw in his eyes.