Marvin the horse was eager to run after being cooped up inside Charlie’s dungeon for days. Merlin was eager to get as much distance from the Rawlin estate as possible. Between the two highly motivated individuals, the wagon made unusually fast progress.

When Marvin eventually tired out, they found a clearing and Merlin went off with Bleedy to gather firewood. Vetica had been quiet since they left. She’d curled up on the far side of the wagon and closed her eyes. Mousifer had been keeping an eye on Marvin in the dungeon, so he wasn’t fully caught up with everything that had happened. Still, the little black mouse could tell something was bothering his assassin friend. He hadn’t left her side since. Charlie leaned against the opposite side of the wagon. Orb floated nearby. It was chilly, and Charlie was excited for Merlin to get a fire going.

So much had happened over the last few days. They had a lot to talk about. Charlie had several apologies to make. With everything on his mind, he wondered if he’d even be able to fall asleep tonight. Luckily, Merlin’s return with the firewood offered the perfect distraction. Charlie left the wagon with Bleedy’s help while Merlin tried, and failed, to get the fire started.

“Make a fire hex or something!” Orb said.

Merlin shot him a look. “Why? So, we can pretend we have fire? My hexes don’t actually do anything.”

“I know. I just wanted to make you admit it. Useless. You and Marvin used to travel from town to town all the time. How the heck haven’t you learned to make a fire yet?” Orb asked.

Orb buzzed out of the way as a hunk of firewood flew past him. Merlin cursed. “I was hoping it would hit. I wonder if a dungeon core could be used in place of flint? Then we’d actually have a use for you besides insulting your betters. And for your information, Marvin and I always stayed in town. A room for me. A stable for him. It was great. We did not stay in the forest like common bandits.”

Orb spun in the air. “Merlin, you were basically a bandit. You just sold snake oil instead of outright robbing people. You know that, right?”

Merlin started to respond, but he paused and looked toward the wagon. Charlie followed his gaze and saw Vetica had gotten up. Mousifer scurried down the side of the wagon to follow her down. She studied them, looking around the camp. “Making a fire?” she asked.

Merlin picked his jaw back up and nodded. “Trying to. I should’ve paid more attention to how you always do it. Making a fire is the least I can do right now. Especially after—” He went silent and sighed. “Well, I’m just not very outdoorsy, is all.”

Vetica laughed softly and went over to join him. A few moments later, she had a fire blazing in the center of their camp. She sat there with her arms wrapped around her knees, staring at the fire.

Charlie looked up at her. He thought about trying to talk to her, but Merlin caught Charlie’s eye and shook his head. He was probably right. They should let her have a moment to herself. He thought of something else to discuss instead. “So, why do you think the cult is gathering rare resources? If what we learned is true, they have to be up to something,” Charlie said.

Merlin poked at the fire with a stick. “Yeah. I was thinking about that myself. We still don’t know a whole lot about what their plan is. I mean, from Lusafeen’s journal, we know they believe they’re close to resurrecting Cendra. But we don’t know how they’re going to make that happen.”

Charlie frowned. Part of him wondered if he’d been wrong to offer the journal. But it had been for his friend. Vetica might not be beside him right now if he hadn’t. They might not even be alive. Whether or not it was the right decision didn’t matter right now. It was done and there wasn’t anything he could do to change it. Besides, voicing his doubt might make Vetica feel bad. He had traded the journal for her freedom, after all. It meant he just had to stand behind his decision, so that’s what he would do.

Orb floated closer to the fire. “Well, I have a theory. Big ugly said they’re collecting rare materials, right? Rare minerals and plants and stuff like that. I bet they’re going to make a soup out of it all. It’ll be such a wonderful soup that they’ll feed it to Cendra’s corpse, and he’ll come right back to life.”

Merlin stared blankly at him. “Sometimes I think I’m the idiot of the group, and then you say something so ridiculous that I don’t worry about it anymore. So, thanks for that.”

Orb flew toward Charlie and nudged him in the shoulder. “Hey Charlie, that idiot doesn’t realize a group can have more than one idiot. What an idiot.”

Vetica laughed. It surprised them. Charlie giggled himself. It was nice to hear her laugh. He turned to look at Orb and noticed the dungeon core twinkle. Had he done that on purpose? Had he been trying to make her laugh? Charlie snuck him a thumbs up.

Merlin cracked a smile as well. “Well, whatever they’re up to, I suppose we’ll just have to get to the bottom of it ourselves. Hopefully Themis has made some progress in convincing the knights. It would be great if they gave up on our trail and chased the actual bad guys for a while. Of course, I have my doubts about that. That Brandt fellow seems stubborn.”

The wind turned and the fire’s smoke blew towards Charlie. He stuck his tongue out and his face scrunched up. The air smelled awful. Bleedy got up from his resting spot and pressed his snout into Charlie’s onesie. Charlie slid through the dirt until he was out of the smokes path.

Vetica paused. She’d been in the middle of getting up to help him when she realized Bleedy had it covered. Charlie smiled at her, and then he looked at her shoulder. A thick bandage cloth was barely visible through the tight fabric of her sleeve. Her wound from the fight.

“Are you doing okay? Does it still hurt?” he asked.

Vetica sat back down and crossed her arms. She seemed visibly closed off all of a sudden. Any vulnerability Orb had purchased with humor discarded in an instant by Charlie’s poor timing. He frowned. He shouldn’t have brought it up.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

But as Vetica stared into the fire again, she found something. He wasn’t sure what. But her face hardened, and she nodded softly. “I’m fine. I’m sorry, it’s been a long few days. Waiting in that place, not knowing how everything would play out…it was stressful.” She turned to Merlin. “I shouldn’t have brought Charlie there. It was a mistake and I—”

Merlin shook his head. “That’s enough, Vetica. We’re just happy you’re with us again. None of that matters now. It’s alright. You don’t have to apologize for anything. You don’t even have to talk about anything that happened. It was stressful. If you just want to move on, we’ll move on.”

Vetica looked down. She reached down and grabbed a handful of dirt. She slowly let grains of it fall from her fingers. “I didn’t think losing my name would bother me as much as it did.”

Merlin’s lips parted, but he didn’t say a word. Charlie thought Merlin was good in these situations, so he followed his lead. The two of them sat quietly, just listening.

Vetica kept talking after a brief pause. “I think it’s because…my mom used that name, too. It was the only last name I ever had. They weren’t ever married, my parents. But she used his name. I don’t know if she had one before that. Maybe she just had one name. But I’ve been a Rawlin since I was born.”

Merlin swallowed. “Couldn’t you just…keep using it? It’s not like you go around introducing yourself as a Rawlin. We didn’t even know, and we’ve been traveling together for a while. I mean, you could still think of yourself as a—”

Vetica shook her head. “It’s different. I know what you’re saying makes sense. I could just ignore him. But in their eyes, I’m a nobody now. A nothing. I shouldn’t care how they see me, but…I’ve always been a Rawlin. Even when I hated being a part of the family, that was still my name. It was the name last name of my mother. It was the last name of my mentor. It feels like I lost a piece of them when he took it away from me.”

Merlin nodded thoughtfully.

“I’m sorry, Vetica. If you want, you can use my name. You can be Vetica Charlie! I don’t mind!” Charlie said. He wanted to comfort her, too.

Vetica laughed at that. “Thank you, Charlie. I appreciate that. But I like the name on you. It’s okay. I’ll get over it and move on, eventually. Sorry for bothering everyone with this.”

“Vetica, you aren’t bothering us. And you don’t have to just move on, you know? It’s okay to be upset. Be upset as long as you need. These things take time,” Merlin said. “And you can tell us anything. We’re your friends,” Merlin said.

Charlie nodded vigorously. He noticed Orb just floating there, and he reached up and poked him.

“Ow!” Orb said. “I mean, yeah, what Merlin said!”

Charlie remembered the fight. “Hey Vetica, is your tummy okay? When did you get that scar?” he asked. He’d heard her mention it during the fight, but among the audience and the fighting itself, he hadn’t been able to hear everything that was said between the two sisters. But he had noticed the scar. Everyone had. It had made him even more worried.

Merlin flinched. “Charlie that’s not—”

Vetica held a hand up. “It’s okay.” She paused for a moment to gather her thoughts. “When I was a little girl, my mom used to tell me that children are precious. I thought she’d was the only person in the world who I would ever care about. But she told me that wasn’t true. She said I’d make friends, fall in love, and maybe one day have a child of my own. A precious one of my own. We lived together, just the two of us, and I was happy. But she got sick. Then my father came and forced me to live with him instead. He said it was time I start my training. So, I did. I met Lilica, and it was the first time I cared about someone besides my mom. But she—”

Vetica’s shoulder slumped. “We had a falling out. Most parents might try to get us to come together again, but Vedic encouraged it. He turned us even further against one another. We stopped taking. Hosuyo took over Lilica’s training, and a woman named Sarena took over mine. Sarena was nice. She wasn’t like the others. She’d had a similar experience to mine in her own childhood and was there for me. I trusted her and told her all these things I wanted to do. I was just a little girl. Just a little girl with a wild imagination that wanted to pretend for a few moments that I could be something besides an assassin. Something besides a Rawlin.”

Charlie frowned. Listening to her story reminded him of his friends back in Sange. All those children forced to grow up away from their parents. It made him sad. It made him sad because he wished he’d been there to help Vetica back then. She’d been all alone. “So, what happened?” Charlie asked.

Vetica took in a deep breath. “I was a teenager when my father found out. One of his spies overheard me. He told my father and then father used the soul assassination technique on Sarena. He made her reveal all my secrets. Everything I told her. She wouldn’t betray me, so he forced her too. It made him so angry. But he hated the precious thing the most. I think it reminded him of mom. He hated the fact that I wanted to run away and maybe have children one day. He couldn’t stop me from running away. An assassin needs freedom to do their job after all. So instead, he stopped me from having children. He kept me from having a family.”

Merlin shook his head. “What? He... that scar is because he—” He couldn’t finish his sentence.

Vetica nodded. “He cut me open and made it so I couldn’t have children. Lilica heard me screaming. We hadn’t talked in years. I’d thrown her to the side because she was different. I’d given up on her. But when I needed her, she came. My father had cut me too high, so it made it harder on the surgeon. It was more painful, and I thought I was dying. When Lilica showed up, all she could see was my father standing over a woman working on me. She stabbed the surgeon in the head and killed her. Father didn’t know how to stitch me up and the surgeon had traveled a long way, so there wasn’t another close by. He told Lilica she had just killed me. But she didn’t give up. She saved me. Somehow she saved—” She choked up. Tears ran down her face.

Charlie didn’t fully understand what Vedic had done. But seeing Vetica cry was too much for him. He didn’t even know Vetica knew how to cry. He wiped his own eyes. There was a feeling then, one he had trouble placing. Eventually he realized it was regret. He regretted the fact he’d promised to let Vedic live. Charlie regretted the fact he hadn’t beat him up already. If he had known what her father had done to her, he’d have…

Merlin stood and hurried toward Vetica. He held his arms open and, to Charlie’s surprise, Vetica stood and leaned her head into his shoulder. She was sobbing. Merlin wrapped his arms around her and sniffled, fighting back tears of his own. “You were just a baby. A child and he—” He shook his head. “It’s alright. It’s alright,” he said, rubbing her back.

Merlin looked at Charlie and made a slight motion with his head. Charlie beckoned to Orb, who floated over. He grabbed on to his dungeon core companion, and Orb floated into the air. The Palmar Grasp ability kept Charlie secured as he held onto Orb with one hand and reached over to wrap the other around Vetica as much as he could. Merlin reached over and pulled Charlie into the hug as well. Bleedy scurried forward, stood on his hind legs, and wrapped himself around one of Vetica’s legs. It was the closest he could get to a hug. Mousifer climbed up onto Bleedy’s back and sat on the racooneever’s head. He placed a supportive paw on Vetica’s leg.

Charlie realized in that moment that it wasn’t his job to be angry or beat anyone up right now. It was time to be there for a friend. He was grateful for the lesson. He was grateful Merlin was there to teach it to him, even if it hadn’t been his intention.

“No matter what that man might think, he could never take away your ability to have a family, Vetica. Because despite all those horrible things he did, you still found one. You’ll always have one. You have us,” Merlin said.