Not My Fairytale

Chapter 31

**Sorry it's a bit late, life has been crazy but I'm officially back on track!

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A Revelation

With May came much warmer weather, a fact that was never more apparent than during the long afternoons spent cooped up in the council chambers.

It was stiflingly hot, though I tried my best to keep the discomfort from my face. The meetings had grown much longer in recent weeks as well. With no new clues from Angelo to keep us ahead of the enemy, the mood had turned much more grim, and rightfully so.

I couldn't help but feel that they were all expecting something from me, though I couldn't tell if it was only the paranoia of knowing their vote was steadily approaching and my fate was still laying in their wrinkled, old hands. After all, they hadn't come up with any brilliant ideas to protect the kingdom either.

Still, the pressure seemed to rise with each passing afternoon, each attack that we were unable to prevent.

On one particularly stuffy afternoon, I couldn't help but throw etiquette out the window to fan myself with the paper that I had brought for notes. Beside me, Franco was doing the same.

Across the table, one of the councilmen vented his frustration, though I couldn't be bothered to look up from the spot on the wall that I had been staring at for the past hour to see which it was, "I just don't see how they are doing it! We have been monitoring all of the major roads and waterways for months, and if they were using the skies, we would have picked them up in a scanner by now. It's as if they are ghosts, appearing and disappearing as they please."

The man beside him grunted in agreement, "If I didn't know any better, I would say they are tunneling beneath us."

The entire table chuckled at that, myself among them, but his words seemed to cling in my mind, as if there was some importance there that I just couldn't quite pinpoint yet.

It was absurd. There was no way they could dig themselves routes beneath the kingdom without attracting notice, yet I couldn't shake the feeling that I was on the cusp of something, like having a word on the tip of my tongue.

My eyes trailed to the map displayed across the far wall in thought.

The men continued their chatter, none of it productive, but I tuned it out. As I gazed at the map, I tried not to allow my frustration to grow. The targeted towns were scattered across the kingdom, each so different from one another. If they truly wanted to cull our human population, and bring about a return to the old ways, then would it not be easier for them to wreak their havoc in one concentrated region first, and then move on? Why spread it out so much and take such risks in traveling those distances? Was it some kind of calculated tactic to make the humans feel unsafe in their homes, regardless of where they resided?

It was clever, I had to admit, and more than certainly working. But, as I looked at the seemingly random towns, I couldn't help but feel that there was something more to it.

I had only visited one of the targeted towns personally, but that singular visit would be forever seared into my memories. The burned buildings, the doll lying forgotten in the ash and mud. I had given a speech there, promising retribution for the heinous crimes committed against them, yet months later they were no closer to receiving their justice than they had been on that day. I wished that I still had the optimism that I had felt in that moment, standing before that dazzling river, a mile from the spring the water shot from.