"Your entire family is dead."
"YOU'RE LYING!!!" My body slumps to the floor, I land on my knees, it didn't hurt because a pain worse than death has taken over my entire being.
It is a lie, it can't be true, it's not true, he is lying, this can't be real. "Stop it, don't touch me." I pull my arms away from his hold as he tried to lift me off the floor.
"Please Aadya, I hate to see you this way, please let me help you."
It is as though someone ignited a fire within my heart and it flows through my veins and spreads around my body. With the most disdained scorn, I could muster I direct this fury in my being towards him because it is his fault I am here and he is only telling me this so that I won't go after my family, well his plan has failed.
"Help me? You want to help me?" Laughter flows through my lips, not one of joy but one of pain and disbelief, I cut him off before he could say anything else and I continued where I left off, "You don't want to help me, you are only doing all these for a horrible plan, now tell me what is the real reason that you are doing this, keeping me here and spewing horrible lies."
He bends down and ends up being almost at the same level as me because he is still taller than me I have to lift my head slightly to look him in the eyes searching for anything that would tell me if there is any truth in him.
"Please just give me a chance to prove to you that I am only trying to help you, I don't like to see you so hurt, here let me help you." He stretches his hands to touch me, the only thing I could do is scream profanities at him, I know I must have called him every horrible thing known to the wolfmen and I am sure he doesn't know the meaning of these words.
"What is going on here? Is Aadya ok? I could hear her screams from my room, what happened here?" I turn to see Dana rush in through the door.
She tries to wrap her arms around me but I don't want her to touch me at all, so I push her away from me and scream at her, "Don't you dare touch me, I know you are with him on this." My index finger points at her as nothing but pure betrayal displays across my face and what I get in return are confused eyes staring back at me.
"What are you talking about?" How dare she pretend she is not in this deceit with her brother?
"Don't pretend! Don't lie to me! How can your brother tell me my entire family is dead? Why would you both be so cruel?" She turns away from me in shock to look at her brother that is now on his feet.
"Why would you tell her that now? I thought we agreed it would be best to break the news later to her, preferably when she is fully recovered and is up and about? But no you tell her now and look what you've done."
"STOP IT!"
"Aadya please calm down, if you want proof we will give you a proof."
"There is no proof! I want to return home to my family."
"I told her now because it is better now than later and I couldn't lie to her that everything is ok when it is not." Ambrose sits on the bed while I remain on the floor.
Dana sits on the floor in front of me, she releases a heavy sigh while her eyes search the room, she looks at everything but me.
I wait silently, daring her in my heart to hold me here against my will and they will know just exactly what I am capable of, she finally looks at me then says, "Aadya, if you would like to return home then that is completely alright, but I would prefer to come with you and a few guards to make sure you arrive safely."
"But Dana…" She raises her hand and looks at Ambrose to cut him short before he could say anything, she then goes on to say to him, "You still shouldn't have told her but now that she knows, we need to prove to her we mean well, so she needs to return home."
"Are you seriously going to let her return her home that is in ruins?" Dana stands to her feet and addresses Ambrose.
"Yes! She needs to know what happened to her family and her kingdom, from what our trackers discovered, she is to be the heiress to the throne of her kingdom, regardless of your emotions towards her, you need to let her get the closure she needs and most importantly she is in shock right now, look at her." Her finger points at me where I sit on the floor without turning her head to look in my direction.
Ambrose, however, looks at me, I watch as his eyes carry anger within them but soon they disappear and soften to carry an emotion I know as familiarity or love, I don't know but I refuse to believe it. They have no reason to want to be around me or to care for me.
If they were doing this for Dion it would have made more sense to me because he and his father had crossed paths with them long before I did, so why? Why are they so… So obsessed with me? Am I right? Is this an obsession? Is this why they don't want to let me go and had chosen to tell me the only reason that is taking me away from them is dead?
But Dana is willing to let me return home. Even if, how am I sure that I would be returning home and not be influenced by black magic to think I am returning home?
After all, look at them, winter fairies are supposed to be the size of my hand not taller than me, that is what black magic can do, look at what Ambrose did a few moments ago, he has the speed of a vampire which is not normal at all.
If black magic can do that then it could do almost anything. I don't know to what extent but at this point, I would prefer to consider it dangerous because if it weren't then everyone would be practising it but instead, it had been banned many years ago before I was born.
This is another reason I can not trust these people, look at what happened to me, a ritual that had been carried out by every wolfman and wolfwoman for generations before had suddenly made me faint and they say I have been half dead for five years.
Wait, oh my Boreas! If I truly had been unconscious for five years then I must be twenty years of age by now.
What do I look like? Do they have a mirror nearby?
"I want to get up." The brother and sister seize their little argument over something I am no longer sure off. They completely lost me at some point.
I no longer care, all I want is for me to see myself in a mirror, I feel like it is the only way to confirm if there is some truth in the words they speak.
There is no way that after five years I would not grow in any way, its either my hair has gotten a lot longer, or I must have gotten taller, or I must have bloomed into a wolfwoman.
"Where are you going Aadya? You need to rest please."
"I want to see myself in the mirror." I don't give her a reason why because I don't want anyone playing tricks on me if they know why I want to see a mirror they may do something with their black magic to manipulate me.
Well, I don't know exactly how it works but I refuse to take my chances on them, I should have been this way from the start maybe I wouldn't have been in this predicament if I wasn't so trusting.
"Easy now, here let me help you." Dana uses her hand to assist me to get on my feet by holding on to my arms and lifting my weight off the floor. I let her because I know that the moment that she lets go of me I would crumble to the floor, I don't know why I feel so tired and drained when I just woke up from a supposed deep slumber, maybe it is because I haven't used my legs in a while?
She guides me to the door I recognize leads to the bathroom that the maid helped me to get ready before having morning meals.
Ambrose remains where he is seated on the bed as he waits for us, he has his head in his hands with his elbows on his knees, he looks defeated, maybe Dana managed to convince him to let me go home, I don't know why she is insisting I return home to see my kingdom.
Even if know that I am royalty and the heiress to the throne, it doesn't mean they are saying the truth of my family's well being, anyone could search and find out I am royalty, I only decided to keep it a secret because I didn't know who the attackers were.
If they could be allies, it would be better if they didn't know but apparently, they do since Dana mentioned it, maybe they never even went to look for my family and they only got information out of Dion.
Yes, that must be it!
Dion obviously doesn't care about me, he said so with his mouth.
As grandmother would always say, "When a wolfman confesses or does something in your absence his words or actions displays his true thoughts towards you."
I had asked grandmother why is that so? And she said to me, "Wolfmen and wolfwomen can say anything to your face in order to please in return of receiving something for their personal gain, but when you are not there they can say as they truly feel because you are not there to give them what they wish to obtain from you."
To me, my grandmother is the wisest wolfwoman alive and I am glad that every single word of wisdom she has given to me did not go to waste.
So there is nothing Dion can say to me at this point that will prove his loyalty to me because how can you be loyal to someone you don't care about, it doesn't make sense. And he said it without remorse that he doesn't care about me.
It is alright for him to not harbour the same feelings I bear for him but what is crazy to me is the fact that we grew up together under the same roof and he has been my guard since I was thirteen years of age but after everything we have been through he could proudly say he doesn't care about me, which means he could leave me to die.
A voice in my head reminds me that he saved me when our land was under attack by those evil ice shooting beings.
Still, he only did so because his father asked him to and my family instructed him to, he can not disobey an order from the king or any royal family member.
I had been so caught in my mind that I didn't realize that I am already standing in front of the mirror, what I see shocks me completely and I am left wondering if what I am looking at is real or not.