"How could you make such an insane claim?" Mr. Whitten yelled at us after we explained the details of the meeting with Julia.
"What should we have done, told them to just get over what happened? Do you want this place to be destroyed?" Bella yelled back at him.
We were standing in my parents' tiny house, which had become the unofficial council chambers of Lilyfield. The tension made the small space seem even more cramped somehow.
"Hey everyone, I understand this is a serious situation but if we could keep the volume down it would make talking this out easier," I said with my palms raised.
"Cram it Simeon, this old coot is calling us incompetent, maybe we should've let Julia erase this place from existence," Bella seethed.
"You wouldn't really let them do that right?" Mila asked with concern in her big blue eyes.
"No, of course not, that's why I told them what I needed to in order to save this place," Bella said with only tenderness in her voice now. The switch from one tone to the other was so seamless that it kinda scared me.
"No one's calling you incompetent. I'm simply trying to point out that in our current state it's gonna be hard enough to support our own village, let alone an entire second one," Mr. Whittens said.
"Look I understand that it's gonna be a struggle at first but as it was the best choice to make for the village, I don't regret making it. Now we just have to make sure that the next governor is capable of following through on it," I said calmly with a slight shrug.
"That's another thing, this deal is really unfair to heap onto someone who wasn't a part of its creation. They will have enough to worry about trying to fix all of the problems Conlin Jr. created," Mr. Whittens said.
"So, what exactly are you saying, we should just go back and cancel the deal? That's suicide if you are," Teresa said matter-of-factly.
"No, I think it would be only fair that one of you assume the role of governor until this matter is resolved," Mr. Whittens said and stared at us.
"You're joking right? If I had to sort people's stupid issues all day, I would burn this place down myself," Bella said and folded her arms in front of her.
"Yeah, that job sounds boring as hell. Sitting around all day looking at finance reports and organizing crap, I'll pass." Teresa said and pretended to fall asleep.
"Well that just leaves you Sim Sim, how great would it be if my baby was the governor," my mother said with dreamy eyes. It almost broke my heart that I completely planned to turn the job down.
"Yeah, that would be awesome son. Lilyfield's lost son returns home, vanquishes a tyrant, and then leads his people into a new and brighter future," my father said with the same dreamy look in his eyes.
I found myself in a strange headspace suddenly. This entire journey started because I wanted to become rich and powerful, now I was being given the chance to step into some actual power and intimidated by it. I guess I never considered the work that came along with that kind of status. I wasn't good with academics like Bella, and I was nowhere near as powerful as Teresa. All I was good at was talking, that would only get me so far without their help.
"Then do it with them, silly," Laura's voice called from inside me.
"What do you mean? Only one of us can be the governor, I answered her silently.
"According to who? If you make the rules, can't you decide who does what?" she asked and chuckled lightly.
"Hey love are you still with us?" Teresa asked and nudged me gently.
"Yeah, sorry I was thinking about the situation. What if we all do the job?" I said hesitantly.
"I already said I would hate it," Bella said and shook her head.
"No, you said you would hate a specific part of the job. You won't have to do the part that bothers you. I can talk to people, you can handle the organization part," I said hopefully.
"Would I be free to run things the way I wanted to, or would I have to answer to you?" Bella asked skeptically.
"What if we made all decisions as a group, like a council? Just so that nothing happens that the rest of us didn't see coming," I said eagerly. The possibilities were now beginning to excite me.
"What do you mean the rest of us? Who else is gonna be a part of this council?" Bella asked.
"Well, if you take lead on organization and Teresa and Mr. Whittens lead our security and military, that leaves me in charge of talking to people and handling diplomacy issues," I said and waited for a response.
"Military, now that's an idea I could get behind. Teach those clowns how to really handle themselves," Teresa said and started rubbing her hands together.
"So, then it's settled, this council will assume leadership in Lilyfield starting now?" Mr. Whittens asked.
Things started moving quickly from that moment on. It turned out that Mr. Whittens was withholding a ton of information about the everyday matters of the village. We walked into the house that Conlin and his father had lived in and there were mountains of paperwork everywhere.
"What the hell is all this?" Teresa asked as she blew the dust off a tall stack of papers.
"This is everything that Conlin Jr. neglected to finish during his reign. A lot of our foreign relationships have been dissolved because of him," Mr. Whittens said and shook his head.
I looked around the room at all the papers and felt my soul trying to leave my body. Teresa grabbed my hand and tried to pull me into a different room.
"I gotta get out of here, the last time I was around that much paper a library burned down," Teresa said and rubbed the back of her neck.
I looked over at Bella and Mila expecting a similar reaction, but I was wrong.
"And we can probably get you a desk of your own so we can read all this stuff together," Bella said and spun around excitedly.
"Oh, I can't wait to start reading the ledgers. I bet we spend thousands of unnecessary gold a week," Mila said, and her huge eyes somehow got wider.
"Oh no she's converted sweet little Mila to the ways of the nerd," Teresa said and threw herself on me.
"Better them than us," I said as we left the room.
We began spending our days working from morning to night. We all met in the mornings to discuss the previous day and plan out the day to come. Then we would separate and tend to our specific roles. For me that meant going all over the village and listening to people's problems and doing what I could to solve them. It wasn't always easy, but I found myself to be surprisingly good at it. For weeks we slowly turned Lilyfield into a thriving village again. We had heard nothing from Dagger's End until the day Leah showed up in person.