The carriages were pulled around as promised by Cadwell, lending him some creditability to Finn and Claudia. Keiro had believed him all along, but he had been privy to part of what Attia knew of him.

"Let's go, Finn," Claudia said when nobody else said anything. Finn looked to Keiro, but Keiro was focused on Attia. When neither responded, Finn turned to Charles and nodded.

"Load everything," Finn directed. Charles nodded once before he turned and walked away yelling orders, his arms waving in the direction of the carriages. After he had gone, Finn and Claudia turned back to Attia, but she did not meet their stare. She had been looking away, but as she turned back, she met Keiro's gaze. When she faced Cadwell, her eyes narrowed, lips tightened, but she said nothing.

"Attia?" Finn asked but Attia only shook her head before she turned away. Keiro looked at Cadwell for only a moment, then Finn, before he decided to follow Attia towards the carriages. With the sheer manpower Finn had at his disposal, the carriages were all loaded and ready to leave within only a few minutes. Since Keiro and Attia climbed into a carriage together, only two guards could fit in the carriage with them. Attia kept her gaze out the window of the carriage, her eyes following the movement in the sea of red and black that had formed across the empty space. It had not gotten much bigger than just the men King Damien had stationed within the palace walls. Had Finn brought the full force of his Royal Guards as well as a makeshift standing army, Attia had no doubt it would've been enough to overpower the Northern king.

"You never said that," Keiro commented without actually saying Cadwell or his relation to her. He assumed she did not want the two guards across from them to know just yet.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"It's a long way to Court, Attia."

"I'm sure you can entertain yourself long enough."

The two guards, who could hear every word perfectly, simply sat silently, pretending as thought the pair weren't having the tense conversation they were. Keiro stared at the back of Attia's head for a long moment, before he gave up and turned away with a heavy sigh. He could not imagine Attia with a father. He couldn't imagine anybody with a father actually. He never had one. Didn't have a mother either, and he didn't like to think of himself as someone who literally didn't have parents, someone It made for pure enjoyment at their misery. To have a father, and an alive one at that, was unthinkable to him.

The rough roads of the Northern Kingdom made for a sleepless trip, and so until they reached the border and crossed into Finn's territory, Keiro and Attia were in tense silence to be endured in consciousness. Once they reached the smoother roads, however, Attia dosed off rather quickly, or at least pretended to. On the off chance she actually was asleep, Keiro left her alone despite how badly he wanted to have a real conversation with her.

Sitting for the long trip wasn't exactly simple for him either. Between his three open wounds, which were slowly but surely bleeding through his bandages, and his inability to sit still for that length of time, Keiro quickly grew restless. Attia had noticed, his shaking, bouncing, and general moving waking her.

"Up now?" he asked in a bitter tone, but she put her hand on his knee in an attempt to still his shaking leg.

"Stop moving so much. You're shaking the entire carriage," she told him before she withdrew her hand and pulled open the curtain on her side of the carriage. "Where are we?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

"I'm asking you," she replied sharply before she turned her gaze to the guard seated directly across from her.

"Over half way to Court."

"I wish you would tell me why you never mentioned dear Cadwell," Keiro said and Attia turned to look at him.

"I wish you would stop bringing it up, but apparently neither of us can get our wishes."

"Would you just talk to me?"

"No," she answered strongly before she turned away. "I'm not talking about it, Keiro. I didn't even want to come here in the first place. I should be in Finn's summer home with a household of thirty to just serve me. No finances to worry about. No insane courtiers. None of your whores asking me where you ran off too or why you won't marry them."

"That didn't happen," Keiro replied, but Attia let out a dry laugh.

"You'd be surprised." Her voice had an edge to it that Keiro could detect but couldn't really place the reason it was there. Surely, she didn't miss him enough to care that much.

"Why did you wear it?"

"I don't want to talk about anything."

"Well, I would."

"The person who ran away and got himself kidnapped doesn't get to make the decisions in this carriage," Attia replied as she turned to meet his gaze. "That right is reserved for the person who had to travel across the entire realm against her previous plans to save him."

"I didn't need saving."

"You were chained to wall. You needed quite a bit of saving."

"I've gotten out of worse."

"With somebody to help you, I'm sure."

"By myself."

"The Prison walls opening up behind you doesn't count as help," she responded, and Keiro's face adjusted slightly. She'd caught his half-lie but part of him wasn't surprised.

"If you didn't want anything to do with me, then why did you come at all?"

"Just because I don't want to talk to you, doesn't mean I didn't want you to die, Keiro. We're not Inside anymore. It's not all black and white out here," she told him, obviously starting to lose her clam exterior as she continued. "There are grey areas here, Keiro. You can like somebody without following them to end of the damn world and back again. You can be nice to people without wanting something out of them. You can care without it having to mean something all the time, you know?" Attia let out a breath as she turned away from Keiro to focus on the scenery as it rolled by too quickly for her eyes to make out the individual lines of the trees and shrubbery. In the silence that followed, she tried not to focus on Keiro, but since he sat right beside her, and she was hyperaware that he was so close, she could not force him out of her thoughts. She could hear him when he wasn't talking. Feel him when they weren't touching.

Until they were. He'd reached out to touch her arm gently, his rough fingers wrapping around the curve of her small arm. As he moved his hand slightly, she could feel the calluses from the years of fighting and near death. "I think caring implies meaning of some sort," he commented softly. Though she said she didn't want to talk about anything, she'd already started the conversation as far as he could tell.

"Then give me your meaning," she replied. She still hadn't turned to look at him, but with her other hand, she reached across her body to touch his fingers gently. When he pushed their fingers together, she'd slipped her fingers between his.

"I don't really know," he answered after a long moment of silence. He felt her fingers squeeze his for a second before she let go and withdrew her hand from his. At the movement, he moved closer to her on their side of the carriage, his other hand moving to her waist. He was suddenly away they had on-lookers, and yet it didn't seem to matter enough for him to stop. "But that doesn't mean it's not there," he added softly.

"Becoming a philosopher?" she asked, and he could hear the smile even if he couldn't see it.

"I have a lot of spare time when I'm not being raided or raiding, or…"

"Whoring around?" she asked as she turned to meet his gaze.

"Not what I was looking for."

"What were you looking for then?"

"Entertaining."

Silence followed, but it wasn't tense. It wasn't uncomfortable. It wasn't anything, really. Just quiet between two people who never in their few years of co-existence had ever been quiet around one another unless one or both were sleeping.

The quiet lasted for more or less the rest of the trip. Even when the two were climbing out of the carriage in front of Court, they were fairly quiet with only short comments to break up the silence. Side by side, they walked towards the main entrance, Finn and Claudia only a few steps in front of them. Finn glanced back at the two, content with the outcome of the sudden trip to the North. He noticed the spots of blood on Keiro's shirt, but said nothing as he continued walking forward with Claudia.

"I need a shower," Keiro commented.

"I'll stop by the hospital and get some clean bandages," Attia told him and he nodded.

"Are you doing ok?" Finn asked, as Keiro and Attia came to his side.

"Yeah, I'm alright, I guess," Keiro answered with a shrug. "It's kind of hard to be tortured when you've been pampered for too long." Only Attia and Finn had laughed, Claudia remaining silent at the comment. She understood what Keiro meant, but the idea was repulsive and she could imagine Finn and Keiro surviving such an environment, let alone Attia. But she knew better than to underestimate Attia.

"Get some rest, Keiro," Finn told him as the four reached the point where their paths diverged. "Sleep in tomorrow," he added as he started to walk down a different hallway, his arm around Claudia's waist. Claudia's arm was around Finn's as well, Keiro noted. "And uh…" Finn paused to look back at Keiro as he cleared his throat. "You might want to stick around for a while."

"Duly noted," Keiro commented as he rolled his eyes and turned away from Finn and Claudia.