Liza was scolding Elya for running away from Mom, calling her rude, and saying that she hurt Mom's feelings. I came over and told her to get away from Elya, I couldn't tell if she was trying to help Elya or make her worse. After Liza had rolled her eyes at me and gone over to where Idrel was sitting. I sat down next to Elya, she was close to crying and I glared at Liza as she walked away. I pulled Elya in for a hug but she moved away from my arms. I didn't think that seeing Mom like that would have such a large effect on her. Her voice was shaky and I could hear her struggling to breathe, every single time she tried to calm herself she was interrupted by sobbing. She was shivering, she sat in the position in her chair that Mom had taught us to use when there were people who we didn't know over at our house, but she couldn't stay still. She was violently shaking.

"Why did Mom look like that?"

She struggled through tears to get a single word out.

"She's sick, Elya."

"But she didn't just look sick! She looked like she was dying!"

Was that it? Did she freak out when she saw Mom because she thought Mom would die? I would be scared too, but Dad told her several times that Mom was getting better before we saw her. Why would she suddenly change her mind just because of what she saw? It's not like she was looking at a literal skeleton.

"You know she's getting better though, right? That's what Dad said, why would he lie to us?"

"Why would he tell us if Mom was dying?"

That was a good point. Dad is a good person, but a good person would never tell their kids that someone they love would die. She spoke up again as her tears stopped for a moment.

"You heard that Mom was mad at Dad for bringing us here, but Dad really wanted us to see her. What if Dad really wanted us here because it's the last time we would see Mom?"

"No, that's not it. After you ran out of the room they had a fight, but in that fight, Dad said that if he had not brought us now, we would see Mom again in a while. Maybe we don't know when we would have seen Mom again, but Dad spoke like we would. Listen you have to trust me, what are we going to do if we just think that Mom is going to die? Do you really want to spend the next few months being so worried that you can't sleep?"

Her tears came back and as she started to speak again her voice became shaky. I had never seen her scared like this, I had never seen her be so emotional. We've had incidents in the past, but even when Idrel nearly burned Dad's arm off, Elya just stood there like she didn't understand what had happened.

"It's not just that. I had a nightmare a few days ago where Mom looked like she does now. I was back in the big room and sitting on the couch and Mom was talking to me, but she looked weird, she looked like she was dying. She was talking to me about how Dad was stupid, and how she was happy that I wasn't like the rest of my sisters. She asked me if I would be fine hurting you if she asked me to."

"Hurting me? Like just me?"

"Yeah, she said that you were the worst out of all of us. After she asked me if I would hurt you, I said that I would never, but then Mom got angry. The last thing she did before I woke up was walk behind me, and I felt like I would explode from the inside."

I didn't have the same dream as Elya, but I understood what she was talking about when she described the pain she felt. It was the same one I had at the end of my dream two nights ago.

Elya burst into tears after describing her nightmare, and I pulled her in for a hug a second time. This time she didn't move away, and as she put her head on my chest her tears started to stain my shirt. I didn't dare move back, or do anything at all, she needed this more than I needed my best outfit clean.

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An hour passed and all of us had fallen asleep. I woke up to Elya resting on my shoulder and I looked over and saw Liza lying down on top of Idrel. I slowly pushed Elya off of me, moving her back to the seat she was in before we fell asleep. I made sure that I didn't wake her up, she needed to sleep anyway. Nobody should ever have to be upset and awake. I heard voices coming from inside the room where Mom was, and I made my way over to the door to try and understand what they were saying. As I put my ear up to the door I could hear Dad and Mom speaking, though I only caught a few sentences.

"Who did this to you?"

"I don't know, all I can remember is that when I left my family after I came of age they said that the lessons they had given me would never go away. I didn't think that they'd literally put a curse on me. At least, if they did I thought it would be some metaphor."

"How long did they say until we can take you home?"

"They said about three months."

"Alright. In the meantime, we'll stay here in the capital. I have a large amount of Melus on me so we'll be fine to stay here. Before we left I gave the courier a large amount of coin and told him to hire someone to make sure nobody breaks into our house. I'll send him a letter with more Melus to give whoever he hired."

"Why are you staying here?"

"They've already seen you, Alice. At the least, I want them to be here so they can see you again if they want to."

"They know that I'll get better, right?"

"Of course they do. There also isn't much to do back at the palace, I'd rather we be somewhere we can do something new every day. I'll go insane if I'm just waiting on news about you back there anyway."

"Alright, we can never tell them about this, the reason behind why I'm sick at least. I don't want any more surprises over the next few months. Especially Idrel, you know that she's-"

Just then I heard the footsteps of one of the people taking care of Mom behind me.

"Well, aren't you a nosy one?"

I quickly turned around and stood up, I looked at her and tried to copy the face that Liza would always make whenever she wanted something from Mom or Dad. I tried my hardest to open my eyes wide and stick my bottom lip out.

"That won't work on me, honey. I've seen far too many kids get away with stupid things because the adults were too caught up in their emotions to punish them."

What was she going to do? Was she going to walk in there and tell Mom and Dad about how I was listening to their conversation that they never wanted us to hear? What would they do if she did? Would they ground me, send me back to the house? Would they never trust me again, and start to leave me out of things that the rest of the family did? My fears were only rising as I waited for a response from this person who was staring at me with a smile that lasted so long it made me feel uncomfortable.

"Listen, I'm not usually a fan of this but you look like a good kid. You seem like someone who understands what they should and shouldn't do, plus, I would be curious too if my Mom had suddenly fallen ill. Eavesdropping on conversations is never the right choice. When people don't want you to know something, they're hiding it from you for a reason. Even if that reason is poor, even if that reason makes no sense to you, it means something to them. When you look past that, you look past what they want, what they feel. You need to think more often about whether what you do is worth the pain it could cause others."

I could barely understand what she was saying. Why would my own parents want to hide something from me about why they aren't fully well? If I hadn't listened to their conversation, would I ever know a single thing about why Mom got sick? How could this person just tell me to not put a single thought into my actions?

"I can see that you're mulling it over. All I've got to say to you is that you need to be careful. One day you'll look past what other people want far too often, and you'll realize that you hurt yourself more than you hurt them by doing that."

I looked at her and nodded, and then I went back to my seat. She opened the doors and went inside to where Mom and Dad were. Before she closed the door, I heard one sentence that she said.

"So, who do you want us to call to get rid of this curse?"

I waited outside the room for what felt like hours, and as I was about to fall asleep again Dad came out and woke the rest of them up one by one. Idrel was clearly in pain from Liza sleeping on her, but she didn't say a single word. None of us did. Dad made a face that we all had never seen before. He looked as though he wanted to kill the nearest person to him, no, rather that he had someone he wanted to kill but that he couldn't get to. He took us back to the inn where we were staying, and we all went straight to our rooms and onto our beds.

The next few months were spent with new activities every day, some days we would visit the Grand Library looking to read new books while putting back the ones we had already torn through. We visited the Arena often to see fights, though Dad would often sit down and not react at all even when the fights caused the entire Arena to scream with excitement. While we were all enjoying our time in the Capital it seemed like Dad was just waiting until he was able to do something he wanted, something that he couldn't do while Mom was still sick.

Our three months in Prymdor quickly came to an end, and the day that we would finally take Mom home arrived.