The Traitor's Heir

Chapter Seventeen

 "She's leaving something out. Something big. I can feel it." Quara whispered the words to her sister as they stood in the entry way to the sleeping quarters. A half dozen beds, all piled with delicately embroidered cushions and shimmering chartreuse blankets, lined the wall on the far side of the long, narrow room.

"It's not as though she had time to tell us three thousand years' worth of stories in half an hour. Especially while you were firing off questions. It would be enough to make anyone lose their train of thought." Lina went to the bed immediately across from the door and threw herself down on top of the blankets. She sank into the enormous feather cushion as her eyes almost immediately began to close. They had lost track of the time that had passed since they'd left home, but Lina was entirely certain that the time to sleep was now long overdue.

"It's more than that."

"I'm sure it is. And I'm certain that in the days to come we'll hear more details than we'll be able to remember and learn so much about history that it would make Elder Deaconberry green with jealousy. If we ever make it back to the Caverns you can spend your days in the library writing out new and improved history books with the real history of Charcha. Although from the sound of the way this whole thing is unfolding we won't have a chance to do that for a very long while since it's up to us to go out and save the world."

"This is insane."

"I'm pretty sure you've already said that. But what's so crazy about it really? I mean, someone has to save the world. Why shouldn't it be us? Especially with a dragon on our side."

"Lina, for three thousand years the best warriors in the world have been coming at this guy. And no one has managed to touch him. He appears to be immortal. He's slaughtered humans and dragons alike. And for some reason everyone seems to think that two little girls from some hidden little cave complex that the rest of the world has forgotten are going to climb up into the light of day and cast him down from his thrown."

"It sounds like it's what we were born to do," Lina half said and half sighed the words as she forced herself to sit up and kick the boots from her tired feet.

"So you believe in the prophecy?"

Lina sighed and sat cross legged, on the bed, running her fingers over a gold figure that danced in flaxen thread across the pillow she'd pulled onto her lap. "This may not make sense to you. It hardly makes sense to me. But I feel like I already believed in the prophecy before I'd even heard it. I feel like my entire life I've been waiting for this moment, like I've known that it was there looming, always just out of reach, and now here we are and what I always thought was only some crazy imaginings actually turns out to be real."

Quara shook her head and pulled off her own boots. "And you know what she's holding back then?"

"About our family?" Lina finally put into words what both girls had been thinking since Ausfela had first related the story to them.

"It's the only thing that makes sense. Why else would we be chosen to do this? It sounded very much like the task of defeating this Emperor has been given to one family for millennia now and the story of the royal family going into hiding very much fits what we know about our own family fleeing the Plains and going into hiding."

"We won't really know until we've been told though. I mean, I'm not going to be going out there and asking a dragon if we're really long lost princesses."

"I don't know why not. I can think of about a dozen more absurd things that have already happened today, so I don't know why that revelation would be surprising at this point. And it would explain why our family was brought in to the Caverns. That was the one thing that I never understood. If security was so tight and if the people of the Caverns were so untrusting of strangers, why on earth would they have ever let a family they'd never met into their sanctuary?"