"How did your father know I'm a dragon keeper?" Aris questioned as she and Sajen strode down the hall, their footsteps echoing in the empty passage. "And how did he know my name? And what was he doing in there? He wasn't even touching me, and I... I could feel his hands..." She trailed off, clutching softly at her chest at the painful memory.
"The Soul Eye," the prince answered.
She looked at him. "The what?"
"It's an old ability passed down to every emperor of the Empire. It allows them to look at a person and... sense who they are."
"So he 'sensed'... everything?"
"Even... before this year?" Nettle added, still sitting on Aris's shoulder.
Sajen looked at them strangely. "Yes... why?"
"No reason," Aris said quickly, jerking her shoulder. Nettle grunted but stayed silent otherwise. "So, this 'Soul Eye'... you don't have it too, do you?"
"Not yet. When I become king I will."
"Right... Why do you keep switching between emperor and king when they're two different things?"
Sajen turned the corner. Aris followed. They passed two maids, both of whom stared at Aris's dark skin, but she ignored it.
"Before the Destruction, the Empire of Shadows was actually... well, it was actually an empire. It spread over a large amount of shadow land. After the Destruction, though, we were reduced to what you see before you. As a result, many Aldenuurlings have started calling us just a 'kingdom.' We don't, but we did take up the habit of calling our emperor a king instead of emperor."
"Even the prince?"
"Oh, good." He looked at her, amused. "You noticed."
After a moment, Aris asked, "What did Raven do?"
"You seem very attached to my brother."
"And you seem very unattached."
"We were never very fond of each other." Sajen glanced at her, then resumed leading her down the hall. "Why do you trust him, Aris?"
"I don't." They passed a guard. "At least, I don't think I do. I did—well, okay, when we started out, I didn't trust him, but then we had like this kind of deep heart-to-heart, and, I don't know... I did for a short time?" She herself had trouble recalling what happened when. "And then we got in a big fight, and things were said—true things, don't get me wrong—and I learned some things about him, and then you guys showed up."
"So... you do not trust him."
"When did you have a heart-to-heart?" Nettle asked incredulously.
"You were asleep," Aris told her. "And, no, I don't. I don't know who to trust."
"You trust me," Nettle said with a shrug, as if it was set in stone.
"Well... yeeees."
"... We're talking later."
"Okay."
Sajen motioned forward. "There are descending stairs close by."
"Thanks for the warning," Aris said, remembering her embarrassing fall in the throne room.
"The truth is, Aris, my brother is a criminal. He betrayed our empire, the royal family, everyone he loves, his own reputation, and his future. The mutual hatred we seem to have unfortunately acquired for the woodland creatures meant too much to him."
YOU ARE READING
Finding the Rift (The Traveling Rifts Trilogy: Book One)
Fantasy"If you were looking for... answers to something, and this random stranger approached you, saying he knew where to find them... would you follow him?" ~~~ Aris lost her memory as a sixteen-year-old. Aris's parents lost all their memories of her at...
