Hi! I'm back on my regular update schedule - once again, so, so very sorry for the ridiculous hiatus. I continue to apologize deeply for that. Alongside, I realize that I never responded to reviews from chapter fourteen - and apologize for that as well! Also, my numbering might be off, so if it is if someone could please let me know to the positive or negative so that I can fix it or not depending on the situation.

Reviews for chapter fourteen:

AreiaCananaid - I appreciate the complement on my tension writing! It's something that I rather enjoy doing - especially when I get it right.
Weirdo - I'm so very sorry for living up to your prediction! It was absolutely not my intent! I appreciate that you're enjoying the story, though, with so little time sunk into it! I've managed to update, so hopefully Halt will be appeased.
Guest - I'm sorry for not updating and leaving you with a major cliffie! I promise I didn't realize what had happened until my update on Monday. Deepest apologies!

And reviews for chapters fifteen through seventeen:

AreiaCananaid - Thanks for the thoughts on my topic-handling! Will say, wasn't particularly proud of it myself - reading it now, it felt a tad forced and I'm sorry if it comes across that way to anyone - but the compliment makes me feel a little less worried about it.

Speaking of, further updates on how I want this story to progress at the end of this chapter. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I'm not John Flanagan. If I were, I definitely would not have missed the last two Royal Ranger books that were published in the last two years. Trying to get my hands on those in the midst of a re-read right now.

18

"Will?"

Will looked over at Evelynn, who was looking at him with an unspoken question in her eyes.

"Yes, Evelynn?"

"What… what happened? Last time…" Evelynn seemed to be looking for the words to finish her question, but Will understood. He motioned for Evelynn to take a seat next to him, and she did, fiddling with the edge of her cloak.

"It was during my own apprenticeship. I was around your age, I remember. We were fighting Morgarath, and Evanlyn, Horace, and I had discovered a bridge being built over the Fissure." Will still remembered that night clearly, even though it had been years and years ago. "Morgarath was building it to attack the Araluen army from behind. He had a troop of Skandians coming through Thorntree as well."

Evelynn tried to remember the geography, but could tell that it would have been destructive had it succeeded.

"What happened?"

Will smiled sadly.

"We burned the bridge. One side went out, though, so Evanlyn and I had to go relight it."

"Did you do it? Relight the fire, I mean."

"We did, but not before a small group of Skandians had come down and taken the two of us by surprise."

"I thought the Skandians were our allies, though."

"Not then, they weren't."

Will continued his story, up to reaching Skandia. Evelynn interjected every now and again with a question. Will found himself lost in his past memories from that time during his apprenticeship. Then, they reached the part when Will and Evanlyn were sold into slavery. Evelynn was suddenly quiet as Will recounted the events he could remember from being a slave. He couldn't remember much from when he was on warmweed, though, and was surprised by how much of that time was missing from his memory. At the end of his story, Evelynn was still quiet. They stayed that way for a few minutes, before Evelynn finally spoke up.

"They didn't kick you out?"

"What do you mean?"

"Halt didn't abandon you once you were in Skandia?"

Will smiled faintly at that.

"From what I remember, he got himself drunk and banished to go look for me."

"He must have really cared about you, then."

"For all the critique and sharp comments about asking too many questions or my 'mediocre archery' as an apprentice, he did. He still does."

"You were lucky to have someone who cared so much."

Will stayed silent. Evelynn seemed to know a fair share about being lucky herself, he realized. The two of them sat in that silence for maybe ten minutes before Evelynn spoke up again.

"How did your parents take it when you ran off to be a Ranger?"

Will paused.

"I never knew my parents."

Evelynn blinked, and Will continued.

"I grew up in the Redmont Castle ward until I was fifteen and apprenticed to Halt."

"Someone must have known them well enough to tell you about them…"

Will shook his head.

"Not that I know of, besides Halt."

"How did Halt know them?"

"My father saved his life in the first war with Morgarath."

"How do you know your last name then?"

"I don't."

"But… I'm confused."

"I got my last name from the Treaty of Hallasholm."

Evelynn sat in shocked silence. She had no clue that Will had been an orphan, too. Not only that, but he hadn't known his parents. Without realizing it, she had said some form of her thoughts out loud.

"...I never knew my parents, either," she said.

"You seem to know something about warmweed, too."

Evelynn was silent. She knew about it, alright. Will didn't press the topic. If nothing else, he let it go as soon as he saw that Evelynn wasn't comfortable talking about it. If she's going to open up, she'll do it in her own time, he reasoned.

"Well, this was fun," he said. "However. It's getting late, and Evanlyn will kill me if I don't get any rest. Maddie probably wants you to be rested, too, before we head back. Now, we're mostly waiting out the Summer Gales."

"What are the Summer Gales?"

"Basically really bad sailing conditions out here. If you want a more in-depth description, ask a Skandian." With that, Will got up and headed to bed. Evelynn decided to follow suit.

The next few weeks were shockingly uneventful in comparison to their escapades not long before. Will was back in a condition that Maddie felt comfortable with letting him practice in, so the three Rangers went out into the forest to practice their Ranger skills most days. Evelynn would watch Will practice in awe when they started. It inspired her to practice more often and with a larger array of skills. It wasn't long before she was seeing a growth in her abilities, which pleased Maddie. Evelynn was already around the average performance level for first-year apprentices, though she was above it in the areas of unseen movement and knife skills. Maddie smiled, wondering whether Gilan had a new competition for his reputation in the Corps as the best unseen mover. Even as a first-year apprentice, she was extraordinarily good at it. Maddie wondered where that shocking raw ability came from.

The days they weren't practicing, Evelynn and Maddie were usually covering areas of geography and history. When they took these days, Will would decide that he was taking a break to watch them. Often, he wouldn't even make his choice known until Evelynn spotted his barely-visible cloaked figure in the corner of the room. It almost seemed that he was making an active choice to keep an eye on her, though for what reason Evelynn wasn't sure.

The summer passed quickly, and soon, the group of Araluens were well underway. The return trip started out smooth in comparison to the last few months, and Evelynn seemed much happier now that they were away from Skandia's shore. Maddie was all too aware of this change in her attitude, and was really, truly happy about it, despite her seasickness. They had left Skandia two days ago, and while she was noticeably ness nervous, Maddie needed to know whether her past would actively intervene with her performance in the Corps. Maddie walked down to the on-board stable to talk to Evelynn.

The younger girl was brushing Midnight and having a muttered, seemingly one-sided conversation with the horse.

"What do you think, girl?"

I think you should give me another apple.

"Maddie says I'm not allowed to."

Where did Maddie get that ridiculous idea?

"Probably Will."

Midnight snorted.

Will doesn't follow his own rules, then. Tug gets far more than I do.

"Well, Maddie still says no."

She's not watching. She doesn't have to know.

"Midnight, no!"

Midnight, yes.

Evelynn rolled her eyes, smiling. Maddie walked up to Evelynn, unknown to her apprentice.

"You know, you should at least make an effort to stay on guard," Maddie said, and Evelynn quickly spun around.

"I was!"

"You were talking to Midnight."

"I...ah…" Evelynn's cheeks reddened slightly. "How long were you down here?"

"The whole time you were trying to explain to your horse that I said you're not allowed to give her extra apples."

"Oh."

"Even if we're sailing on quiet waters, with no conflict visible for miles, it doesn't hurt to stay on guard."

"You're right."

"Would I be telling you this if I wasn't?" It was clearly a rhetorical question, so Evelynn didn't answer it.

"I do need to talk to you about something, though," Maddie continued, and Evelynn felt her heart sink. She had a strong feeling as to what this 'something' Maddie wanted to talk about was.

"I…"

Maddie pulled Evelynn closer to her and rubbed her back comfortingly. Evelynn was caught by complete surprise.

"You didn't have to hide it from us, you know… we get it."

Evelynn was silent, and felt the warm, fat tears rolling down her face.

"Maddie…" Evelynn was lost for words. She had thought that, when they found out… they'd shun her, throw her out, abandon her. She wasn't expecting this. "Why?"

"You're my apprentice."

"I… I know that… but…"

"You heard about how Halt got himself banished to go after Will, right?"

"Will told me, yeah…"

"I would do that for you, too."

Evelynn was speechless once more. She had no idea that Maddie was so completely dedicated to her.

"Why didn't you tell us? We could have helped, you know."

"I…" Evelynn paused, picking her words. "I didn't want to be abandoned again," she said, her voice barely audible.

" The Ranger Corps is like its own family. We support each other, no matter what crazy things happen. And trust me, there are a lot of crazy things that happen."

Evelynn was silent. Right now, no one had to say anything; they were just happy to be in each other's company. Evelynn was aware that, sometime after the Fenn incident, she had started to see Maddie as, possibly, just a little more than a mentor. She smiled internally at the thought, and the two Rangers stayed there, in each other's embrace, for a good long while, the gentle waves rocking the boat under them in a calming way, even to Maddie.

Shorter chapter but I hope it was satisfactory - I remember enjoying writing the end rather much for the sheer cuteness of the scene.

As I wanted to talk about - where I'm going with this. The story itself is almost over - we hit the climax in the third part of my panicked hiatus update Monday - but I am going to be going somewhere with this.

Once this is over, I have a series of one-shots in this universe, and if you guys would be interested in those, I can absolutely post them - they're short but they're mostly fluff and giggles.

I fully intend on being back next week, and don't plan to leave the story for another two years. However, given that the story is almost over, I still have to do something afterwards, so I may rewrite this story - of course, with a little more solidity. If you're interested, let me know! If there aren't interested parties, I may leave the story as it is - while I personally feel like I've gotten better since I finished writing this, it's not, admittedly, a horrible piece of writing, and may be better to let it rest as is. I still like the story as it is, and would mostly be re-doing some rather obnoxious plotholes in the early chapters and smoothing out character interactions - not to mention, making my Rangers a little less awful when it comes to tracking. That grated my nerves a little bit.

But- yes, that's all for this week. Let me know if any of the above sounds interesting, and I'll try to work something around it! It'll be nice to finish out this story, as well - this was a major writing project for me, and I feel a lot of pride about having finished it at all.

See you around!

~TRGG