Arya drifted in and out of consciousness, not that she could really tell the difference any more. The Shade would appear even in her dreams now, to try and force her to give up the location of Ellesmèra.
He didn't know that she would never give up. She would rather die than betray her people.
She had told him that, when he had first captured her, but he had just laughed, saying she would change her mind soon enough.
And now that that time was approaching – the time when she must either break or die – she realised that she didn't fear it.
She'd come too close to death too many times to fear it now. She almost welcomed it, in fact, and her pain-racked mind struggled to think of a reason why she shouldn't just give up.
She thought with frustrating slowness, gradually piecing together memories and old hopes and dreams.
A dragon egg, she thought finally. There was a dragon egg. She knew she had sent it to safety, though she dared not think his name, but she had wanted to see dragon riders in the sky again, she remembered.
She had wanted so much, once.
Now, with pain and delusion distorting her thoughts, all she wanted was to know the answer to one question.
She had felt a presence watching over her many times now, as her fevered mind reached for solace wherever she could find it.
She didn't know who, or what it was, or even if it really existed, but she had felt the watcher's eyes on her, had felt their presence.
They weren't malignant, as far as she could tell, but caring and naïve.
And they were probably a product of her deluded imagination, she admitted candidly to herself, but it was nice to think that she had her own guardian angel watching over her.
She heard a commotion outside her cell. Was someone there? She could see blackness at the edges of her vision, and knew that she wouldn't have long.
She strained to hear, and then froze at the sound of someone opening her cell. Despair threatened to engulf her as she waited with bated breath for the Shade to appear.
Instead she saw a boy. He couldn't have been older than sixteen, and she had never seen him before.
He didn't look like one of Galbatorix's soldiers – their eyes were cold and cruel.
Hie eyes were warm and caring, and shocked when they looked at her, with a hint of determination and nobility.
Arya wondered if she was imagining everything she thought she saw in his eyes.
But she couldn't deny that he had the same caring look that she had always imagined in the eyes of her guardian angel.