Talking with Oren had been nice. Contrary to what he had claimed at the beginning of our talk, saying that therapy consisted mostly of difficult conversations, most of the night had consisted of me talking away at him about whatever came to my mind, even if it didn’t involve the Mediators or Jamie at all.

Oren had been surprisingly compliant with all of it, not even trying to steer us back to talking about Otherworlder business, just nodding along as I vented my frustrations at him.

I had been surprised how therapeutic the whole experience had been. Given that it was a therapy session, I suppose it made sense, but I hadn’t trusted it. I had still been wary of Oren’s skill in manipulating people, but with how little he spoke and how much free reign he gave me, I doubted that he had done anything nefarious to me without my notice.

Regardless, I had no problems admitting that all the venting that I did last night had been good for me.

Waking up the next day, I felt relaxed for the first time in a while. The morning sun shining through the fabric of the curtains, the chirping of birds muted by the thick walls of the carriage, the softness of the plush cushion that I’d slept on. It was comfortable enough that I didn’t want to get up.

So, I laid there. After travelling with him for a week, I knew Jamie’s sleeping habits well enough to know he wouldn’t be up for a few more hours, while habit from my usual life had me waking up at dawn. Even if I didn’t have that habit, I doubted I would’ve slept in regardless while we were travelling alone.

Though I’d never thought that Jamie would attack me, even back when I was still scared of him, I was still nervous enough around him to not want to be asleep near him. Now that I was less afraid of Jamie and had an entire team of Mediators to watch over him in my stead, I felt I could finally take the time to clear my sleep debt after a week of surviving on only a handful of hours of sleep each day.

Unfortunately, a knock on the door interrupted that idea.

I sighed, swinging my legs off the side of the carriage seats and standing up. When I opened the door, I was surprised by who was standing behind it.

“Tenna, right?” I said.

“Right!” he said, giving me a wide smile. He had a slight Timuran accent, but spoke with the confidence of a local. “Pleasure to finally meet you, Ms. Lena. Officially, that is.”

It was an overly friendly greeting for someone who I’d never spoken to before, but the default persona that each of these Mediators held seemed to be one of overwhelming friendliness.

“Pleasure to meet you too,” I said.

“May we talk inside?” he asked.

I wondered how many more times I would be cornered in this carriage. I nodded and stepped back, not seeing much of a reason to deny him, nor any possibility that he would simply accept if I denied him.

Not needing any further prompting, Tenna gave me a polite smile and a slight bow before stepping up into the carriage. I sat down as he pulled the door closed behind him. Despite how comfortable I’d thought the seat was a moment ago, I was starting to get sick of it.

He sat down across from me. With him being slightly shorter than I was, the carriage wasn’t as claustrophobic as it had been last night with Oren’s size taking up most of the space, but I was still painfully aware that the Timuran man sitting across from me was likely strong enough to kill me if he wanted to. I wasn’t too bothered by that fact, becoming numb to it by this point.

“I’ll get straight to the point, Ms. Lena,” Tenna said, folding his hands over his lap. “I’m here to let you know that Leader Sera has stepped down from her position and has appointed myself as leader.”

“What? Why?”

It hadn’t seemed like Tenna had finished talking. He still had his mouth open as I spoke up, but he didn’t seem upset by the interruption.

“I was just about to get to that, Ms. Lena,” he said, with a hint of amusement in his voice. “I would ask you to be patient and hold your questions until I am finished.”

I shut my mouth. He nodded in satisfaction and continued.

“It seems that Second Oren had a talk with Leader Sera last night, which led to her stepping down as Leader and giving the position to myself. While I am trained in the responsibilities of a Leader, I will admit that this would be my first time adopting the position outside of training sessions.”

He bowed his head to me.

“I apologize, but I do not have the experience nor the confidence to allow the flexibility and lenience that Team Leader Sera has shown you,” he said. “As a result, I would be more comfortable if we would stick to standard practices.”

His sudden deference surprised me, but not enough that I didn’t recognize the purposefully vague way that he was speaking. Though he was Timuran, it seemed like that trait of Mediators was universal.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“I am not confident that I can properly monitor your interactions with Jamie,” he said, with his head still bowed. “I understand that the two of you have had interaction under Leader Sera’s supervision, but standard practices say that civilian Followers should be isolated from their Otherworlders.”

I frowned. Was this because my talk with Sera last night? I guess it made sense. I had shown compassion for someone that they planned to kill, maybe too much if they thought they needed to isolate me from him.

When millions of lives were hanging on the balance of a young boy’s mental state, it made sense to think that they wanted to control every factor that could potentially set him off, up until the moment where they killed him.

I shook my head, not wanting to think of it.

“Why did Sera make you leader, again?” I asked instead.

Tenna looked up, finally raising his head. “Second Oren had a talk with Leader Sera, which led to her making the decision to step down.”

“And what was that talk about?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“I was not told,” Tenna said. “And it was not my business to ask.”

I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not, but that I’d grown to learn that that was a standard sentiment when it came to dealing with Mediators. I had my own guesses regardless.

“Thanks for telling me all this,” I said. “Was there anything else you wanted to say?”

“No, there is not,” Tenna said, bowing again. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Lena. If there is anything you need of me, please do not hesitate to ask.”

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“Sure,” I said.

Taking my lazy answer as dismissal, Tenna bowed once more before leaving the carriage and closing the door behind him.

I sighed and let my head rest against the wall for a few seconds before getting up and opening the door. I wanted nothing more than to fall back asleep and pretend that everything was okay, but I couldn’t stand the idea of another Mediator possibly cornering me in the carriage for more conversations. I needed to leave.

Outside, I wasn’t surprised to see that all of the Mediators were already up. They were scattered around the campsite, and though they all pretended that they hadn’t noticed my exiting of the carriage, I wasn’t naïve enough to actually think that was the case.

Oren and Tenna were talking with each other in muted voices under the shade of a distant tree, while Laush was stowing away a pile of bags into a storage compartment on the side of the second carriage. Sera was sitting alone at the fire pit, staring at a pile of embers that housed a few baking potatoes in its center.

Jamie was absent from the scene, though judging from the one tent that was still standing and the fact that it was still only barely past dawn, I assumed he was still sleeping.

I made my way to Sera. She didn’t look at me even as I sat down beside her.

“Do Mediators not know the term, patient confidentiality?” I asked.

Sera kept her eyes locked forward, fixed on the fire. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have made you uncomfortable.”

It took me a second to get what she was implying. I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? I was right?” I asked, unable to believe it. “You like me?”

Sera winced, but still kept her eyes pointedly away from mine.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I can’t deny the possibility. Which probably means it’s true. Some Mediator I am.”

It was the most vulnerable and dejected state that I’d ever seen her in, which made me instantly suspicious. It didn’t feel like an act, but I knew just how good the Mediators were.

“This isn’t another trick, is it? You’re not just acting like this so you can get in my good graces?” I asked.

Sera let out a dry humourless laugh.

“Maybe it is,” she said, poking a stick into the fire, shifting one of the baking potatoes to the side. “It makes sense, right? That’s what I’m supposed to do. I’m a Mediator. I shouldn’t be acting like a horny fucking teenage girl.”

Though it didn’t look like she was putting much force into it, the stick she was using to bake the potatoes snapped in the middle. I noticed a pile of similarly sized sticks sitting to her side, and she picked one up and started to push around the embers again like nothing had happened.

“You know what, you’re right. This is a trick,” she said. “You should go. You wouldn’t want to be fooled by my manipulative schemes, would you.”

I didn’t know what to think. A part of me agreed with her. She was a Mediator. By her own admission, trying to manipulate me was something that she should be doing. It made sense. While Tenna’s method to making sure I didn’t influence Jamie was to separate me from him completely, another way that could be accomplished was if I could be manipulated into influencing Jamie in a way without me realizing.

But this felt wrong, somehow. Sera really did look like she was disappointed in herself. I’d never heard her sound so defeated like this.

No.

It was possible that that’s what she wanted me to think. It was possible that I was playing right into Sera’s hands. Maybe she actually was manipulating me, and by pretending to acknowledge her “failures” in a sarcastic way, she was trying to get me to put my guard down.

I shook my head. Maybe she was, and maybe she wasn’t. I didn’t know what to think, but I couldn’t let her jerk me around like this. There was only one thing I could realistically do in this situation.

I stood up and left.

For the rest of the day, nobody bothered me. Jamie and Oren rode in the same carriage, with Laush as their driver, and Sera drove my carriage, while I sat inside with Tenna. I didn’t talk at all, and Tenna seemed content to let the silence sit, taking the time to cross his legs and meditate for the entire day. I busied myself with watching the passing scenery out the window. With us riding through a road that cut across the plainslands, it made for a very boring pastime.

We stopped at night to have dinner and set up camp. Though I joined the group for dinner, I remained silent the entire time, having nothing to say. Jamie, Sera, and Oren all talked to each other, telling jokes and stories while the rest of us ate in relative silence.

Once everyone finished eating and turned in for the night, Oren knocked on my door for another “therapy session.” I closed the door on his face.

The rest of the days were more or less the same. The seating arrangements occasionally switched around so Jamie wouldn’t always be sitting with the same person, but I was never assigned to sit with him. Whoever I sat with, I didn’t talk to, spending my time either gazing out the window or practicing my magic if I got too bored. With most of our time spent travelling on the road, that meant that the only time I saw him was when we woke up and had breakfast, and when we set up camp and ate dinner.

More than a few times, I noticed Jamie look in my direction, acting like he wanted to say something to me, or at least involve me in the conversation somehow, but before he could, one of the Mediators would always do or say something to distract him away from me. I don’t think he ever noticed.

On the fourth night, Sera made an announcement that we would be back in Plainswood by noon the next day.

I was glad that the trip was ending, and with one more night to go, I was eager to fall asleep and get to the next day as soon as I could. After we ate dinner and said our good nights, I went to my carriage and threw myself into bed immediately.

It was difficult to fall asleep. I wasn’t used to sitting around all day like this, and after so much inactivity, I was too restless to want to stay still for even longer. Despite my desperate desire to sleep, it seemed like my body was fighting that urge to the best of its abilities.

I sighed, but stayed lying down, recognizing that the only thing I could do was just wait and hope that sleep took me anyways.

A few minutes later, I heard a knock on my door. I was nowhere near falling asleep, but I was in a bad enough mood that I wanted to blame the knock for interrupting my sleep anyways.

Oren hadn’t tried to talk me into another “therapy session” since I slammed the door in his face, so it probably wasn’t him. For a second, I wondered who it was and what they wanted, before I quickly decided I didn’t care. Whatever they wanted, they could fuck off.

It was only after the fifth knock that I got annoyed enough to get up and swing the door open with the full intent of kicking whoever was on the other side in the face.

The door did that for me, swinging open and smacking my visitor with a meaty thwack. I considered closing the door, just so I could do it again, but I noticed who was standing outside it.

“Jamie?” I asked.

The boy sheepishly grinned at me, peeking his head out from behind the very same door that had smacked him in the face.

“Umm, hi,” he said.

What was he doing here?

“Hi?” I said hesitantly.

Jamie’s smile faltered a bit as he looked nervously around him, though it seemed more like he was avoiding my gaze more than he was trying to actually look at anything in particular.

“Sorry, were you sleeping?” he asked, scratching the back of his head. “Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” I said automatically, then winced when I realized how harsh i had sounded. “Sorry, I’m a bit on edge.”

Jamie’s smile returned, though it was skewed awkwardly in a hesitant grin. “Yeah, I kind of noticed,” he said.

A long silence stretched between us. A ridiculous feeling of nostalgia came across me, as I remembered how these silences would be commonplace between us, back when I was still afraid of him killing me.

Jamie coughed into his hand.

“I feel like we haven’t talked in ages,” he said, still awkwardly refusing to meet my eyes. “If you’re not sleepy, I was thinking we could just talk for a bit. If you want to, of course.”

I stared at him for a few seconds, wondering what brought this on, before I noticed movement in the corner of my eye. Oren’s figure was hard to miss, as he crawled out of his tent and stretched his body in an exaggerated way. Jamie followed my gaze and noticed Oren, just as Oren pretended to notice us.

“Oh,” Oren said, acting surprised. “Are you two having trouble falling asleep too?”

“Kind of, yeah,” Jamie replied.

“I get how you feel, my brother,” Oren said, stretching again and walking towards us. “Being cooped up all day is making me restless. It’s nice that we’ve got good company, but I’ll be glad when this is over.”

“Uh, yeah. Same,” Jamie said.

“You want to go for a walk?” Oren said, jerking a thumb down the road. “Might be good to shake some of the restlessness off.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Jamie said, looking back at me. “You want to come too, Lena?”

Though I was making eye contact with Jamie, at the corner of my vision, I could see Oren giving me a pointed stare.

“No, I’m fine, thanks,” I said, taking the hint. “I’m a little tired.”

Jamie frowned. “Are you sick?” he asked. “I can heal you if you are.”

I wondered what I looked like for him to react this way. I smiled as best as I could manage, though I wasn’t sure it would be anywhere near enough to be convincing.

“No, just tired,” I said. “I’ll be fine. Go on your walk.”

“Oh,” Jamie said. “I did wake you up, didn’t I? Sorry.”

I shook my head.

“You didn’t,” I said. “I really am tired. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“If the lady says she’s tired, you shouldn’t push her, Jamie,” Oren said, gently chastising him. “Come, my brother. Let me teach you the proper way to talk to girls.”

Jamie spun around to blush and sputter at Oren, insisting that that wasn’t what he was trying to do. I didn’t hear most of it, since I quickly stepped back inside my carriage and closed the door, blocking any and all sound from coming in.

I sat down and let out a weary sigh.