Discoveries

23

"You let him run," Sabrina said.

"But–'

"I'll have none of that. You let him run to save your own skin. You should have fought him. Killed him. And if you couldn't, then at had least called for help, so that we could do the job. What is a fighter that can't kill her enemy? Dead. Or worse. Did I not train you well enough?" She looked at me with a crossness I had never experienced with her before. She'd always been so calm. The Rose was looking unhappy too.

"It has happened, and we cannot turn time back. But, Alyssa, you have not done well. He is one of Her best fighters, and you let him slip away. Is there any chance you might have done it on purpose? Or were you just a weak coward?" Rosalinda said.

"I, I... Come on, this isn't fair. How can you think that? I would never... oh screw you all!" I'd had enough. How I had ever liked those people! I leapt off the Rose's balcony, straight onto Jasmin's back.

Just go somewhere.

Alright.

I breathed in deeply, and exhaled slowly. As usual, it didn't help. If they were going to have a drastic change of mood, so could I. I mean, wasn't I supposed to be the teenager over here? Had they entered a midlife puberty? Two important Niandori had almost been killed, and all they cared about was Aspen escaping. What else could I have done? Yeah, maybe call the others and keep him distracted in the meantime, but with my telepathy skills not being in their best graces he would probably hear it too. And I just didn't think of it at that moment, okay? Accept it.

Jasmin was so fast. It seemed to have something to do with the Realm. Here, she could fly over the vastness of the Realm within just one night, but in Lena it'd taken her several hours to get to Miran. Now she landed on the stone plateau we had picnicked on in my first week. Oh, those days had been so different from now. The carelessness, the joy.

A faint sound disturbed my thoughts, causing me to frown. I looked up and...

"No. Way. Uh uh." I shook my head.

Rosalinda smiled down at me, finding it all quite amusing. "You needed to see them some day soon, so why not now? As an apology for my unjust words."

"May I... touch them?"

"Yes, why not?"

They were smooth, and strong, but felt so delicate, just like a rose's petal. That's what they were, actually. Four beautiful, pink to orangey pink, huge rose petals, attached to the Rose's back. And she could fly with them. Really fly. How it worked, I did not know. But fly she could.

"Every Silera gets a pair of wings the moment she or he flowers. One cannot know what they will be until that moment, although it's usually something to do with your flower or animals or your name, or, in some rare cases, what a combination brings. I can show you some drawings of them later, they can be quite extraordinary," Rosalinda explained. I kept my mouth shut about what I'd seen in the pool. How on earth did a butterfly have anything to do with me? Before I could start thinking about it too much, I asked her a question that had been on my mind for a very long time.