"We need to go. Now." Achilleus' voice cut through my daydream more suddenly than I would have hoped. His skin was pale and clammy. He rubbed his fingers together at his side as if trying to push away the clamminess of them.

"Are you okay? I reached my hand out to him and offered him a seat. "Sit a minute." I encouraged "It's not always easy the first time I guess." I said wrapping my hand around his to guide him down. "What did you see?"

He took my hand in his and yanked me up to my feet. His eyes shifted around uneasily, whatever it was, he didn't seem like he cared to stick around and learn more.

"We can't talk about it here." He whispered in a hushed tone. His eyes scanned the faces of people in the crowd. "It's a matter for the king." He began leading me out of the village, sticking to the little side paths that we had walked through earlier in the day.

His grip around my wrist was firm like a parents. If not for how sweaty his hand was I would have almost been charmed.

I was afraid of whatever had him so worked up, whatever called him to flee as fast as he could to find the king. An assassination, I hoped not. My father was a good man. He may have been boring to talk to, but the people that lived here were well off, that would be senseless. Wolves. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. What if Inigo was waiting for friends, what if they were coming back for us to finish what they started, What if the kindness in the cave was all a lie. I kept pace with the prince back towards the castle, only one thought rang through my head. Would Inigo hurt me? I had caused him to get shot, but I had also come back to help even if he had turned me down. I thought that he had been sincere. His eyes had been soft when he spoke with me, he seemed content in his cave and grateful for food.

"Achilleus." I called to him as soon as we were a good distance away from prying ears. "I need you to tell me what you saw."

His eyes flashed at me over his shoulder. "Aryanna, I do not know how much danger we could be in, It could be nothing. I would prefer not to leave you nervous until after I've spoken to the king."

"That's hardly fair, you wouldn't have seen anything at all if I hadn't pushed you. I ought to know." I protested.

"Princess, I promise to never keep another secret again, but this is a man's matter.

I scoffed and pulled away from him as soon as we hit the doors of the castle. I darted up the stairs to my room.

A man's matter. I spun on my heels and flipped both my middle fingers up towards the stairs. "Bastard." If I was in danger, I had as much right as anybody to know.

I needed to know. I would go crazy if I didn't. I just needed to get to my fathers office, easier said than done. No doubt if they saw me snooping outside the door I would be in big trouble. Besides that, how trusting of a partner would I look if I didn't wait for him to tell me.

The answer popped into my head. The servants' pathways, I had nearly forgotten, I used to run around in them all the time when I was little. They were hardly used anymore.

I started to feel along the walls with my hand until I came upon a light false stone door that swung open with a slight creaking noise. The musty corridor here was just tall enough to stand in, and just wide enough for a man's shoulders. I didn't know where I was going, but I had an idea of the directions.

As I got closer to my father's study I could start to make out their voices. I followed them as best I could.

"Your majesty, I come with important news." the urgent voice had an urgent cadence to it. Through the rippling echoes of the voice through the corridor I could make it out to be the prince. "The Seer in the village gave me visions of a war."

My face warmed with worry. It had been generations since the last war. The war that split us into four kingdoms and pushed the dark creatures to the west. The fighting had a terrible cost on life.

"So a seer' sees a war. What did she show you?" My fathers voice was eerily calm. Seer's might not have had a reputation for being on the mark, but they rarely fell far from the target. If the seer really saw a war, there was sure to be some kind of conflict. The question was what.

"I saw my men fighting alongside yours. We held our ground, just outside of Langdon Keep." He spoke quickly and to the point. I was thankful for that. As I closed in on the servants panel door in the office the voices were perfectly clear. I could hear my fathers chair creaking as he shifted up to stand.

"This enemy of ours, did they have a face."

"No. I could see us. We looked upon it with so much terror that we all threw our swords to the ground and came to our knees." His voice trembled from the mere recollection. My mind could not fathom a creature so awful that it would force my fathers surrender so completely.

"A dark creature then." My fathers heavy boots paced across the room. I heard the creak of him leaning on a table. "They have grown in number lately." The king said, shuffling something around the table with his hands.

"They have?" Achilleus asked, approaching him. "I see. A map of the West Woods. Are these markers everywhere that you have had encounters?" he asked

"No, the places we have stationed our patrols."

"I didn't know your men went into the forest."

"They do on occasion. We need to make sure those filthy creatures aren't setting their camps up or preparing attacks."

"And they have been?" The prince asked, already knowing the answer.

"We've crossed paths more than we care to lately. Never violently, we hold to the treaty." Father said. I felt a familiar pull in his words. I heard it a lot, when he was holding off a dash of information for mother's sake. Achilleus seemed to catch it too.

"Did something happen?"

"I was told this morning that a wolf may have slipped through last night just to the south. No more than a few hours from here." The shuffling of items on the map stopped. "I will push a few more patrols that way, and send more into the woods." He patted Achilleus' back. "If they come, we will not be surprised, thanks to you."

"Of course, Your Majesty, I care for your people as much as my own. This wolf, did he slip through this morning?" The prince asked.

No.

"Last night," said the king.

My blood ran cold when the prince opened his mouth so proudly. "I believe I may have found him at the lake, he may be dead."

"Maybe dead is not enough, I will send a patrol to look."

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Through the narrow corridors I did my best impression of running to my room. The mountain of a man that I had spent all day trying to push to the back of my mind was now assaulting me from it. Every step felt like running through mud. Every blink jabbed at me with his wolfish eyes. Every corner I turned felt like stepping into the cave again. Gods Ignio. I cursed to myself. It would only be a matter of time before they found him in that cave and drug him out of it to kill him or worse. I pushed out of the corridor of the hallway and back to my room.

"Maybe he took the medicine." I said out to reassure myself. I prayed that he had. I prayed silently to no one in particular that at some point this morning Inigo had realized that dying somewhere else was a fine choice.

I knew that there was simply no way. He had been stubborn in his decision to leave. They would find him there, sitting against the wall, waiting for whatever came for him, just like I had. An honor to choose where you die. That was all he was waiting for now. Dying slow was never his plan, he had just realized that he would be found first.

A small part of me almost admired that he would sit and await his death instead of running from it. The rest of me wished I would have known how much of a risk he was really taking by staying, maybe I could have said something to change his mind. Maybe I could have given him my horse and walked home. I would have lied and said it bucked me off and fled, and he would be back to the forest or wherever it was that he meant to go.

I sat by the window paralyzed with this sense of responsibility. If I had shut my damn mouth and stayed away from the market, none of this would have happened. My middle finger dug into the flesh of my thumb, whittling away at the flesh. I may have broken through to the bone if the knock at the door hadn't pulled me out of my trance.

"Come in."

Achilleus stepped into the room and shut the door quietly behind him. "Worried my lady?" He asked.

"A little." I confessed, though he didn't need to know why.

"Don't be."

"Gee, thanks, I'll try that." I glared at him and he chuckled. He took a spot on the edge of my bed.

"My vision was not as bad as I had thought. I overreacted and I am sorry." he gave a light nod and leaned back on the mattress. "Should we go back to the market? The situation is handled, you seem like you were having fun."

"no" I said. I did not want to go back. I wanted the truth, I wanted to be able to tell him that Inigo was not a threat. It was too late for the warning to help the wolf. All that would come of it is being labeled a traitor for aiding a criminal. I guess that would be a fitting punishment for showing a dying man a little grace. "What was in your vision?" I asked.

"Nothing crazy." He said.

My brow shot up. "You drug me all the way home for a vision that had no details worth sharing. All of that for.... nothing?" My voice stayed level. I could feel a pressure building in my shoulders. I knew exactly what he had seen and yet he would not share that with me. "I don't need you to protect me from this silly little thing. I just want the truth."

He nodded and slid off the bed towards me. "very well, you deserve it." He sat down beside me on the edge of the window sill. "I had seen a civil war. North and south united against our two kingdoms."

I snapped my response back to him faster than I should have. "You told my father that?"

"Yes, My Lady." He tried to take my hand in his but I pulled it away to myself.

"And what did he say?" I asked, wondering how long he would keep this little charade.

"That your relations with the south were as strong as ever. Hard headed kings perhaps, but all dedicated to keeping peace." I did not like how smoothly these lies came from his tongue. "See, My Lady. Your father is a great king, He stays ahead of these things. I was wrong to worry and I am sorry that I upset you. You still seem upset."

"I'm not." I said coldly. It was the right answer to say if he was telling the truth to me. It was far from the right answer.

"Of course." He said back, waiting for a few moments in silence before getting up to kiss my head. I allowed the affection but did not appreciate it. "Are you still shaken from last night?" He asked. I could feel him prying at me like a crowbar to get my emotions out of me.

"No, Why? Did you see anything about wolves in your dream?" I asked, giving him one last chance to come clean.

"No, not at all. It was just scary for you, I thought I would ask if you needed anything to help you relax. A book or a tea perhaps?"

"I would like to be left alone."

For a moment I swear he was surprised. I caught a glimps at his eyebrows squinting down, interrogating my response but he returned to his soft self before I could pick up on much more.

He gave a soft nod and kissed my forehead once more. He stood in my doorway for a moment. "If you want some company, I will be in the library with tea."

As soon as he was gone I felt my guard finally break down. He is lying to me. The thought unnerved me. Why would he lie? I asked myself. What did he gain? Maybe he gained my obedience, maybe he just plainly enjoyed lying to me. Maybe it was all he knew how to do. He lied like a snake, so effortlessly that I never would have known if I had not heard the truth. When did he start his lie? I tried to push away the thought but it was too necessary to consider. Did he even have a brother that had vanished in the west? Had he made the whole story of Ghalene up. I could not bear the idea of having liked such a twisted man. After sitting with myself and chewing on the conversation for what felt like an emotional eternity I finally gave into the optimistic thought that Prince Achilleus had not lied to me before. He had lied to me today because he cared enough about me to make sure I wasn't worried about the faceless terror of his vision. I hoped that his ruse was genuinely in an effort to handle the burden on his own, even if he didn't need to. I tried to hold onto the optimistic thought that Ignio had run off to freedom as well. That lie was a harder one to bite down on. He had been in no condition to walk. The bittersweet prayer that I whispered to myself as I prepared for dinner was that they would kill him on sight. That way it would be fast and in the cave like he had wished.

My regal dinner robes felt like strangers on my skin. Spending the larger part of my day in my tattered green gown always made my nicer clothes feel stiff and heavy. Dinner was as it always was, a gluttony of farm life. I sat across from Achilleus and tried my best to be cordial. We ate in silence regardless. My father was too caught up on his wolf problem to think about starting useless chatter. I was thankful that the ball would be in 3 days. I picked around my meal until dessert came around. I finally worked up the nerve to break the tension.

"The pies are delicious Achilleus, you should have one."

He looked over at the pieces and pointed one out to a servant for a slice. "So she speaks, I will have one."

my father chuckled and joked to the boy. "Women get like that sometimes, dessert is usually the answer to the problem."

My mother threw a cherry at him from across the table. "That's bullshit and you know it."

"Oh I do I?"

"Yes, I'm every bit as pissed off with you after cake as I am before. I'm just too tired after a good meal to care so much."

The king chuckled and threw the cherry back. "Well you stop complaining to me about it, so that is a win."

dampened commotions echoed through the halls from the grand entryway. The rattle of shackles, the huffing and complaining of men. I started to get up, as did the prince but my father lifted his hand "Stay in your seats." he ordered, and stayed in his as well. The shuffles grew closer. I could hear one of the men grunting under the weight of what they carried. The iron shackles scratched and clanked on the stone away from our tower. The door opened and a single patrolman approached the table. I craned my neck to see out the door but I could not find anything other than stone to look at.

"Your majesty, I apologize for the interruption."

"Yet you persist, go on." Father said, thumbing his cutlery.

"You majesty, We have found the wolf and brought him back for trial." The patrolman said proudly.

My blood turned cold.

"Great work, throw him in the dungeon."

My breath stilled in my throat. Maybe they were stupid, maybe they had found a large normal wolf and mistaken it.

"If he should see trial, your majesty, he requires a brief time in the infirmary, a nasty arrow wound."

My hands clinched around the arms of my chair, my knuckles white and aching from the pressure. I pressed myself back against the chair

"Is it... show it to me, bring me the wolf." The king stood and walked towards the door. The patrolman ran ahead.

My breath was long gone. I could feel my body screaming for air, but my throat would not open. I prayed that maybe they had found a different wolf, or a traveler in the wrong place at the wrong time. I shut my eyes and prayed that I would find anybody else when I opened them. He seemed nice. It is so hard to hate somebody when you have seen them struggle.

I heard the shackles scrape into the dinning hall. 3, maybe 4 men carried whatever suspect they had found.

"Stand." My father demanded of the creature in front of him. I heard a man strain and groan as his shackles came to rest.

I opened my eyes to see familiar moonlight silver staring back at me from across the room.