Dusk of the Realm

21

Throughout the next five days, Serena did not see much of Tarin. He was planning something, that was clear, and she was pleased about it; she was determined to be happy by the prospect of Iliss being rescued, regardless of if the girl made her envious and nervous. She had bothered Tarin to go after Iliss even before the message was sent to them, anyway, and so she could not exactly complain that he was following through on her order.

She only saw Tarin from distances as he passed from one place to another for those few days, but she saw a lot of Will. He came to her to apologize the morning after the strange interaction he had with Dallin on the staircase, and she accepted it without issue. Everyone had been exhausted and distracted, and she knew people often acted strangely when their minds were otherwise occupied. He smiled gratefully at her, and that smile gave her the confidence to ask him for something she desperately wanted. He agreed to it without even a moment of hesitation.

So they had headed down to the training grounds, and Will had started her off with blunt arrows. "They won't hurt anybody, even if you manage to hit them," he had joked, and she had laughed. She had not expected any success on the first day of trying to learn how to shoot a bow, but she discovered that it was not as hard as she had thought it would be to hit the closest targets. The farther ones were much more difficult, and she struggled to angle her arms the right way and pull the bowstring with just the right amount of force to maximize her shot. Will assisted her with the patience of a saint, gingerly readjusting her grips and moving her elbow centimeters at a time with just the tip of a finger. He barely touched her, but due to the way he did, she had a feeling he was scared to do so. She supposed most people would be, and she wished she could make him more comfortable, or at least convince him that she would not have his head removed if he happened to scratch her.

On the second day of this training, Lyla wandered onto the field with Isaiah. Serena had nearly forgotten about both of them, so she greeted them as cheerfully as she could manage, handing the bow in her hands over to Will as she embraced her best friend. She made small talk for a while with Isaiah, asking him where he had been during the ball, as she and her mother had wanted to publicly thank him for what he had done. He told her that he was terrified of dancing, and so was hiding from the celebration, though he had met with both his queen and hers later that day. Serena did not pry for more information regarding those meetings, though she was certainly curious. While she would never be able to repay Isaiah for what he had done for her, it did not change the fact that she barely knew him at all, and so had little else to discuss.

She was horrified that she had not seen Lyla in days, especially when she realized how upset her friend was. Lyla wanted to go back home. Her parents would be worrying about her, she said. They probably thought something had happened to her, and to Serena. She understood by now that Serena did not plan on going anywhere, but she wanted nothing more than to leave the Realm and get back to the human world.

This ended up in a fight between the two of them; one of the very few that they had ever had. Serena told her that she would speak about it with Tarin, but Lyla exploded at this, saying that Serena was the one in charge, that she could get Lyla out of here in a second if she wanted to; that the Murphys had cared for her, had done everything for her when she had no one else, and now she had tossed them aside like they had never mattered at all.

Then she was striding back off toward the castle, still in the hoodie and jeans she had worn each day since she had first arrived here. Isaiah declared that he had better follow her, as he did not think she knew where she was going. Serena was thankful to him for that as well; she realized that she had not treated her friend as well as she should have. Lyla was right; she had cast thoughts of her human family aside ever since she had first landed in the Realm again and seen Tarin waiting for her beyond the Portal. She owed as much to the Murphys as she owed to Isaiah, and she had not figured out what to do about either situation yet.