Ehren made his way up the two flights of stairs to the room where Askel said Akira was barricaded. The door was open but he knocked anyway. He was met with growls from different corners of the room.

“Akira, it’s me,” he addressed the room in general.

“Me who?” came her slightly slurred voice.

“It’s Ehren.”

Silence.

“Kira, please let me in. Askel needs to know you’re ok.”

“My father just died, of course I’m not ok!” she shouted.

Ehren sighed.

“No, of course you’re hurting. It hurts so much that you just don’t want to feel anymore. So, you drown yourself in one thing or another. But the numbness eventually wears off and you hurt again. You just hurt all the time and you don’t know how to not hurt anymore, aside from drowning out the pain.”

Ehren choked back a sob. Memories of the day his sister died came flooding back.

“I know what it’s like to lose someone close to you.”

“Maybe so, but you don’t know what it’s like to lose a teacher, a mentor, and a father all at once. You don’t know how much it hurts.”

She was right, of course. He didn’t know what that felt like. But he did know what it was like to lose a confidonte, best friend, and little sister all at once. Seeing Akira like this brought back memories of that agony. It was like the scar had been ripped open and he was losing her all over again.

Tara lay pale and unmoving in her bed. He sat with his head in his hands in the pink, fluffy armchair she’d insisted on having for her reading corner, despite hating the color pink. It was his fault she was here in the first place. He’d said he’d take her out to the stables and teach her to ride but father had needed them for official business. Business that had taken far too long. By the time it was finished, it was nearly too late to do as he’d promised. He’d gone to her room and mother’s sitting room looking for her initially, then shook his head at her absence from those rooms. Much to their mother’s chagrin, Atarah had a habit of hiding in the library. Since she learned to read, she was most often found there with her nose burried in a book. She’d learned new languages simply so she could read some of the books in their vast library and expand her knowledge. When he ran into the head librarian two doors down from the library, he decided to ask if he’d seen Tara. Eilo said she’d been in earlier looking for books on horses but had left just before he had. He figured she was headed to supper but had gone the opposite way of the dining room. Eilo then asked if there was a banquet taking place that night because the direction he’d seen her walking in, was the direction of the banquet hall. It was also the direction of the stables. Ehren paniced. He raced to the stables, only to find Tara was nowhere to be seen. He went to the closest paddock, which just so happened to contain a wild stallion. There was another stallion in another paddock not too far away. He and Ferros were supposed to try to tame them by their sixteenth birthday. She was in the paddock containing the larger stallion. He was taller than their father’s chestnut, who was nearly a draft horse in height alone. The stallion she’d chosen was, of course, the one he’d been gifted. Its coat was the color of his hair, onyx, but its mane and tail were the color of whiskey. The stallion’s amber eyes showed great intellegence but they were also tinged with fear. Both stallions were angry and terrified of their new surroundings, so Tara being anywhere near one of them was one of the most stupid things she could ever do.

“Tara!” he yelled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

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She didn’t answer right away.

“It’s ok, he’s not afraid of me,” she spoke quietly and evenly.

“Are you insane?!?” he demanded. “OF COURSE he’s afraid of you! He’s wild, Tara. It’s all he’s known until he was brought here for ME to tame.”

“I read about breaking mustangs, that’s what they’re called, in a book.”

By this time she had turned to face him.

“Reading about it in a damn book, doesn’t make you an expert and it doesn’t mean you should immediately try it out on one of the wildest horses in the stableyard!”

“I know that,” she snapped. “I simply wanted to see if the techniques worked.”

While she hadn’t raised her voice it’s sharpness caused the stallion to do a stutter step. Ehren sucked in a breath.

“Now, kindly leave so I can focus on what I’m doing,” she growled, causing the stallion to slow warily.

“Tara, mom will kill me and you if anything happens.”

The stallion pranced nervously and turned to face her.

“Ehren! Tara! Where the hell are you?” Ferros’s voice carried across the empty stable yard quite easily. “Tara! Mom needs you! NOW!”

The last word thoroughly spooked the stallion causing him to rear.

“TARA!” Ehren screamed.

She turned but it was too late. The stallion’s hooves caught her square on the forehead as he returned to the ground. Tara crumpled to the ground, unconscious and bleeding profusely. Yet, the stallion had calmed. Ehren raced to where Tara lay and immediately sublimated to Uncle Arri. Uncle Arri had done the best he could but her future was still uncertain.

The accident had been five days ago. Tara still had not regained consciousness. Mother probably blamed him for her current condition but he blamed Ferros. If he hadn’t yelled and spooked the stallion, none of this would have happened. Ehren himself shouldered some of the blame for promising to teach her to ride but Ferros took the lion’s share.

Ehren shook his head to clear the memory. He hated that memory almost as much as he hated his lack of memory after Tara’s death.

“I know it hurts, but drowning out the pain doesn’t work,” he choked out finally.

“How could you know what it’s like?” Akira demanded. “You’ve never lost someone in your life!”

You don’t remember her, do you Akira? He thought.

“You’ll never understand how empty and hollowed out I feel! How could YOU, the sheltered Prince, know the pain of true loss?” She said the word prince with a distainful sneer.

“I know what it’s like,” he told her quietly.

“NO YOU DON’T!” she screamed.

“YES, I DO! AND I CARRY THAT GUILT AROUND EVERY DAY. I’M THE WHOLE REASON SHE’S DEAD! I KILLED HER, THE ONLY GIRL I THOUGHT I’D EVER LOVE! She’s dead because of me. And after she died, I felt empty and hollow and I thought I’d never love another girl. So, I drowned my pain and sorrow and most of all, my guilt, in liquer.”

Ehren felt a hand on his shoulder. Kase stood just behind him. Ehren wasn’t all that surprised to see that he had come up to check on them. They’d been yelling at each other for the better part of an hour. It only surprised him that Kase could be that silent.

“Prince, you don’t have to relive those memories for her,” he whispered.

“Yes, Kase, yes I do,” Ehren replied with a quiet sigh. He turned back to Akira. “You may not remember but Ferros and I had a little sister, Atarah, who died tragically young.”

“She didn’t die,” Akira whispered.

Kase and Ehren exchanged confused looks.

“Father called her to take her away to a hospital on one of the bigger islands.”

“Called whom, my lady?” Kase asked.

“The one person only my family can call,” she replied.

“She means me,” a distictly foreign voice said.

“Who are you?”Kase asked.

“Freyja? What are you doing here?” Ehren asked.

“The Eames family is under my protection. I came to see how it fairs now with this most recent loss. Askel, it seems, is taking it better than Akira.”

Ehren rolled his eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me princeling!” Freyja thundered.

“So my sister lives?”

Freyja didn’t answer right away. Finally, with a sigh the goddess revealed herself.

“There is no easy way to answer your question, Prince. I fear you will not like the answer and it is easier to show you.”

She held out her hand. In it, she held a smooth perfectly round stone. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary stone but on closer inspection, it was shot through with thin veins of gold, silver, copper, and iron. A small depression in the very center contained a single diamond.

“Take the stone in your hand, princeling.”

Ehren did as she requested.

“Hold it flat,” she told him.

Again, Ehren did as she requested and she put two drops of some sort of liquid into the depression.

“Now, look. But be warned, it is going to be difficult for you to see.”