The Selection

Chapter 21: Silence

I awoke to the King sitting in a chair at the end of my bed. If you're thinking "that's creepy," you're not wrong, it was. I squinted as daylight beamed through the balcony doors, trying to see if it was really him.

"Welcome back, Lady Ember," The King confirmed it was in fact him.

"King Anderson," I nodded. King Anderson chuckled at my greeting. If he thought I was going to stand and bow to him in my night dress, he had another thing coming. The king stood up and slowly walked to the doors, staring out at his garden. The floor creaked with each step eerily.

"Are you a traitor, Lady Ember?" The kind asked bluntly. Up until now I hadn't really seen my situation from that point of view but I could see now where he was coming from. It isn't every day your enemy shows enough interest to take your sons girlfriend and deem her necessary enough to return alive.

Girlfriend?  My inner voice asked sweetly. I rolled my eyes. Chill girl, he has 12 others.

"No," I said firmly. "I would never betray my country."

That was the cold, hard truth. But then the south was also apart of my country. They didn't act as though they wanted to overthrow the kingdom, they simply wanted their attention and finally they got it.

"You have to understand," he began, not taking his eyes off of his garden, "These times are... inadequate. We have a lot of people watching us, Ember. A lot of people who know we were attacked so they could get to you."

Yeah, okay that looked bad. I'm sure many of my fans for the selection were no longer staying true by my side. The King turned around, giving me a hard cold stare.

"The question is Ember, why did they attack us to get to you?" He said with a monotone voice.

"You may want to sit down," I told him. He didn't. I sighed sitting up, ready to offer all of the information I had. Eventually throughout the story, he did take a seat. Processing everything I was giving him.

I told him they called me Princess and bowed to me. I told him about the picture, which he surprisingly didn't take to heart like I had. I told him that their leader was a girl, she wanted to work with me specifically but they wouldn't introduce her to me yet. I told him they wanted to destroy the caste system. Then as I was about to tell him about my mother I stopped.

Don't, my inner voice commanded. Not yet.

I didn't know why but it felt like there were things I needed to figure out on my own or maybe even with my mothers help before I talked about her affiliation with the rebels.

"This leader," he began after a couple moments of silence.

"I don't know who she is or even have a guess," I reminded him. "I only seen me-"

He held up a hand. "Could it be your mother?"

My heart felt like it could fall out of my chest. It took a couple beats for me to think about all the possibilities. She was always such a closed person, she'd left the King to marry my dad who was a 5 in a small town where no one would ever be suspicious. Nothing ever happened in Carolina. She stowed away in her room doing who knows what. It could be a possibility...

Then the mans words rang back in my head about how my mom "failed" them. He'd said I'd better not make the same mistake as her. She couldn't be their leader but I also wasn't going to tell King Anderson that they spoke about her. I shook my head.

"I don't think so, Your Majesty," I said quietly. He nodded, standing up once more.

"Well, if that's all the information you have," he insisted, eyeing me again. I felt like he could see right through me, obtaining all the secrets I was holding in.