While Escaping Fate | ✗

VI. Sun and Moon

Relie flung the door closed behind her. It shut with an awful bang of finality. Her anger coursed through her veins for one long moment, as she panted and breathed heavily. Then her feelings of despair crashed down in an almighty flood, washing away her rage like it was a bit of flotsam. Relie slumped against her door, the carved grain of wood pressing into her back. She heard a door slam in the house and flinched. Daegan was gone.

Relie hesitated, but then pulled open her door -- it was a bit stuck after she had thrown it so forcefully closed -- and then creeped out of her room. She stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at the entrance hall and front door, which she clearly and distinctly heard Daegan lock. It sealed both the inside from getting out and the outside from getting in. Relie was trapped again, gasping, her throat gripped in imagined suffocation. She stood there, defeated in the darkness, with the illumination from her bedroom bathing her back. Daegan had not lit the wall sconces before he went, and so the hallways and most of the rooms where natural light did not shine were shrouded in shadows. When the sun set, even the rooms with windows would be subject to complete darkness.

"He almost caught me," said a voice by her shoulder.

Relie shrieked and stumbled away from the intruder, smacking him with her hand in her instinctive fear. She nearly tumbled down the stairs, but the person caught her wrist, preventing further slaps and also preventing her from slipping. Relie saw a male figure as she struggled to release her arm. He turned his face just slightly, and the bedroom light illuminated half of it.

"Farren!" Relie gasped.

He laughed lightly. "You were scared."

"Bloody well I was scared!" Relie burst out, past niceties by now. "Release me!"

He raised his eyebrows, and though Relie could only see half of his face properly, she thought he still looked amused, as he had in the garden earlier. "As you wish, of course."

His long fingers let go, and she snapped her hand back to her side like he was a hot surface she had accidentally touched. The two measured each other. "What are you doing here?" Relie finally asked.

Farren shrugged. "I wasn't sure, at first. I think I am now."

"Am what?" Relie asked, but he was not done, and ploughed on with his monologue like she was a silent spectator to his performance.

"It's two different things to hear about the existence of a sacrifice and then to meet that person in the flesh. I was curious, originally, but then I realized you were an actual human. I had considered you a walking piece of meat. I was not expecting you."

The way he said it made Relie blush. The words paired with the tone implied that Farren was pleased by her. She still had not wholly recovered from her shock of his sudden appearance, but now she was starting to realize how surreal this was: the Prince of Aurelia was standing in her house, speaking in circles, and while not supposed to be there in the first place. Such excitement had never visited her dull life before.

"What are you doing here?" Relie repeated. She could hazard no guess.

Farren pulled one corner of his mouth up, but the rest of his face remained quite serious. "Have you not guessed yet, Relie? I am going to play the hero. I am going to help you escape."

"Escape," Relie repeated dumbly. The word echoed in her mind. It rolled along her thoughts. She did not know what it meant. She did not know what he meant in using it.

"Yes," Farren said, like it was obvious. And maybe it was. "Don't you want to escape from this?" He waved his hand, the gesture encompassing Relie's dark house -- and Relie herself, she thought.