Sorry for taking so long, and for giving such a short chapter. Thanks for pushing me over the 100 review mark - now I get to count down to 150! Love to read all your comments, thank you!

As usual, Read and Enjoy

Angela and I slipped into the depths of her tent that smelled a mix of mints, spices, and mushrooms. On her left, she reached out and snatched a vial filled with icy blue liquid. Then we sat down at the small table: I blinking in wait and Angela staring at her grab. The werecats already lounged in the back area, hissing and purring in their own seemingly private conversation.

Feeling as if ants were crawling up the lengths of my legs, I said, "Angela, I do not know what you have in mind, but I do not have the energy or the will to–"

"Bah!" Angela slapped the air, frowning. "If all the great heroes in our legends and stories and dreams simply did nothing due to 'lack of energy' or inability to gather their wills, then they would scarcely be heroes today!"

My brow furrowed. "But I am not that."

The herbalist rolled her eyes. "You say it like I have never heard it said before. One hardly can image what they truly have the potential to become."

My brow dug deeper as my irritation rose. "I refuse to be forced to –"

"Princess Gwendolyn will do as I say and like it or else her little secret may no longer be a secret," Angela interrupted with a smirk. Her hand popped open the vial and her other snapped out to grab my wrist.

I sucked in cold air through clenched teeth. "Secret?"

She seemed to ignore me, plopping some of the icy liquid onto my palm and saying, "Press that against your throat where your voice most resonates."

"No, not until you explain your threat."

"I did not threaten, child. I merely stated a fact."

I scowled. With a hesitant hand, I cupped my throat with the goo. The liquid was cold in an extremely hot sensation, and I hissed at the pinch.

"Now sing for me," the witch ordered.

"Pardon?"

"Sing! I need to know the strength of your voice. The gel there on your throat will change to a certain color when it reaches the right temperature. I will time this to see how long you can use your voice without it fading."

I swallowed, feeling awkward and sheepish in ways I did not understand. It was not that I was embarrassed to sing – for I could sing well. But Angela disconcerted me, bewildered me through and through.

When I failed to begin quickly enough, Angela flicked her fingers at me in an impatient movement. "Begin; I do not wish to have to hang Caden over your head every single time I ask for you to do something."

"You know about that?"

Angela sighed. "About how you lied to Caden that his family was dead as a way to convince him to accompany you here? Aye, I know of this. Now sing. I grow restless and need the background noise so that I may knit pink socks."

I swallowed down the knot that was quickly forming in my throat. Hearing it said so plainly – so blunt and simply – was like a punch to my neck. The first few words to drip from my lips landed off key and sharp. Angela shook her head and rolled her eyes as I pushed through the sour lump and attempted to sing a childhood ballad well known in the Empire.

Oh Caden! I wished to call. For all my regret in my lie, I cannot take it back. I cannot! It was as if I suddenly could not fathom never having such a deep connection with Caden. Did I then love him?

Angela kept any extra comments to herself as she pulled thick pink fabric wrapped around two pudgy needles and listened to the sad inflections of my voice. The bedtime song lulled into a sorrowful ballad that poured my bewildering grief onto the floor.

I sang for hours continuously, only taking quick spurts of breath to accommodate my lungs. My voice attracted many viewers, and they stood outside the tent with murmuring lips and awe-shining eyes. The larger the crowd grew, the more irritated Angela's fingers became as they directed the knitting needles with fast precision. Before my voice began to teeter, she had finished both socks and had begun on a brown scarf.

"Stop, Gwendolyn. Your neck is now the color of fruit sauce," Angela said.

I cut off in the midst of the lamentation I was singing, breathing deeply and cupping my throat despite the slime that covered it. Pulling back my hand, I saw that it indeed held a reddish twang to it. However, it smelt more like blood than fruit.

Angela handed me a rag to wipe the goo from my skin and jumped into a ramble of explanations. I caught only part of what she said, but the herbalist did not seem to mind. My mind continued wandering to Caden. Feeling such loss and sadness in losing any human being expect my mother and Evelyn was strange and harrowing.

By the time Angela sent me off to bed, it was well into the night. The stars glittered like tears against the black drop, and the moon was as bright as an eye was white. In small blessing, I was too exhausted when I fell onto my mattress to fully recognize the missing presence of Caden.

The next week and a half, Angela worked the strength of my voice and nothing more. And when I could speak little, she went about teaching me the differences between herbs: which were poisonous and how and those that were health boosting. Together, we mixed various potions and serums, gels and hardening goo, and perfected a poison Angela would not tell me the purpose of.

And every night I wished to see Caden waiting for me; every morning I wished to wake up in his loose embrace. But he never returned, and I found pushing back the ache and focusing on Angela's work was the only remedy to feeling numb and normal. The war preparations continued on, and in the distance, an army gathered. Soldiers murmured of the Blue Rider's return. When would he come? Did he dissert them? Did he join sides with the King? Was he dead?

I was not sure what to think. But as I walked to Angela's tent, a cold feeling the likes of a quick breeze rolled up my arms. Things were still changing, and it seemed for worse.

Angela hummed as she worked. Her sure hands flitted about her plants and plucked the appropriate anatomies to place into a clear jar. In her basket that sat on the table, a curious colored pile of mushrooms and fetus stewed in the afternoon heat. The sunlight streamed past the tinted green fabric, casting a low color over the tent inside.

"What is this for?" I asked, motioning towards the basket.

The herbalist shrugged. "A recipe I have half a mind to keep to myself. Why don't you grind those seeds over there into a fine powder?" The grinder she was referring to was on the opposite end of the shelves she was working at.

I went to work, the prick of annoyance feeling more numb every passing day. Having small jobs occupied my mind, and I would have gone mad by now should I had went about the same as I did in the castle.

I watched Angela out of the corner of my eye as I ground the seeds. There was a vibrancy of excitement shaking her core, and it brought out a wild, unique smile to the woman's plush face. "Why so excited, Angela?" I inquired.

"In the air there is a spark of happening igniting the plot!" She started ripping plant leaves and stems that she'd collected in the jar. "Through special resources, Solembum has detected The Blue Rider shall be among us very soon. And with his arrival, the flames shall be uncontainable!"

I pursed my lips, thinking on the extremities of war. Why Angela should be so emotional for blood and death and uncertainty, I had no idea. But Angela was a strange woman regardless and not so easily deciphered.

When his name was spoken, Solembum popped open an eye from his lazy rest in the corner of the tent. For a moment, he seemed to debate the worth of our words. And then the large eye closed. Pricilla hummed beside him, her nap left unaffected. However, she contacted me through thoughts in a bored, frowning tone.

Do not destroy the Blue Rider's family as well.

I still felt an ignition of fury at each of her insults, but I managed to hold back any reaction. I simply huffed in response and ignored her black form. She hated my attempts at coping with Caden's loss, how I could find the ability to laugh or smile. I had told her I wished to believe Caden was alive and would return eventually, but the werecat was adamant in my mourning.

"We shall see the dawn of war soon, aye?" I asked to distract myself from the freezing of my heart.

"Aye."

I swallowed. "And Galbatorix's army grows larger even now?" The fact of which did not surprise me. My Father had many ways of finding an ends to his means.

My words seemed to ting a nerve of Angela's, and some of her loose vibrancy tightened like a lock. "I do not like the looming odds against us," was all she offered.

I finished grounding the seeds, and Angela instructed me to pour them over the basket contents. As I dropped the last puff of powder, however, shouts and bellowing curses rose like the gurgle of an approaching waterfall. The whole camp was suddenly very alive.

I casted a glance at Angela, but her face had blanked. The rush of voices melded into each other so much so that it was difficult to make out a true sentence. Walking outside the tent, I searched for the cause of the ruckus. Perhaps we were being attacked? At the mere contemplation of that thought, my heart began to weigh heavier in my chest.

Could Caden have returned? If so, he brought back with him something splendorous enough it had the camp talking and bubbling with loud activity.

I had to know for sure. I had to see him with my own eyes. Was he hurt? Would he want to see me? Should I wait for him to come find me? Angela did not stop me from running through the camp and following the direction of the loudest voices. The workers I passed had a brighter light in their eyes, held their weapons with tighter, stronger grips. My mind flew on so many levels; I barely heard what was being said anymore. I wanted to believe it was Caden coming back to me. I did believe.

But when I began to near Nasduada's tent, the sight that slid in the sky punched my chest and stole my breath.

Sapphire blue glittered everywhere.

A/N: What do you think?