SWNOVELS Chapter Aria XI
Eddie and Octavia played a game a little bit farther ahead in the valley. While Alex and Aria sat down in the grass.
She healed up quite nicely. Faster than she’d ever healed before, but she’d also never had Centaur’s medicine before. She’d heard tales of Centaurs, they were said to have been born of magic. And true that had to be.
She sat with her legs crossed and picked at the grass with her fingertips, pulling it out of the ground and apart in her hands. Alex had his back in the grass as he gazed into the sky.
“So, how did you escape?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Their ropes were like the twig on a dead tree. They broke faster than the shields of her army.”
“I take it she’s right foul?” he inquired. She let out a scoff.
“You don’t even know the half of it,” she mumbled, tearing the grass into pieces between her fingertips. She was quiet for a good long while, silent until she couldn’t take it anymore. Until she couldn’t withhold the secrets any further. “She is right foul, but she is of my blood. We shared a father. Though, Seraphina is my sister but only in blood.”
“And she tortured you.” he finished for her. “Your own sister. And she tortured you. Why? Doesn’t she love you?”
“She does,” Aria confirmed. “In her own way, twisted as it is. Her torture was meant only to keep me close, to punish me for betraying her.”
“Do you love her?”
Aria didn’t answer for a long point in time. “I did, once, long ago,” she sighed. “But loving her allowed me to be blind to her evil. Aye, she is my sister. But I can no longer allow her evil to reign.”
“Doesn’t that make you sad?” Alex inquired. “She is your sister, after all.”
“It doesn’t make me feel anything,” Aria replied. The black-haired boy inhaled deeply, and let out a sigh.
“I know this doesn’t help you any, but I know that Octavia thinks of you as a sister, and she’d be mighty glad if you thought of her that way as well,” Alex told her. “But I told her not to force anything on you, it’s been a rough few weeks.”
She was about to nod when Peep ran on her knee. “Alexander, Aria, you must come quickly. And bring the young ones as well.”
“What is your rush, mouse?” Aria asked. “There’s no need for it, we’re all here, and we won’t be leaving.”
“The witch’s on her way,” Peep told them through haggard breaths. “She’s come to meet with Omdrus. Hurry now, hurry! We must get back to camp.”
There was great concern. For the mage had no reason to meet with the great wolf. She thought him foul. She hated him with every fiber of her being, and her hatred grew furthermore with every lifetime.
Seraphina hated all things good. She cherished the dark and the evil without concern for what it caused.
Without concern for whom it would consume.