Chapter 2

"Do you think she's here?" a teenage boy asked his 2 friends. 

"Ha!  She wouldn't be here!  She's probably at court finding a husband!" his friend replied.

"I hope you two aren't talking about Keladry of Mindelan." a third boy stated, "She went off 9 years ago to become a knight."

"Yeah, but even if she did she'll either be off getting herself killed, or she'd already be dead." the first boy commented.

"But you guys, the last time we tried to drown kittens we were caught." the third boy stated warningly.

"Shh," the first boy warned. "Do you hear that?"

Off in the distance they heard someone running through the brush calling Kel.

"Hey, there's a girl sitting on a log over there.  She's like crying her eyes out."  The second boy whispered returning from the stream.

Curious, the boys crept closer to find out who the two people were.  The person who had been running finally stopped.

"Kel," he murmured as he sat next to her on the log.  "What's wrong?  Do you not want to be married? I thought that was what you wanted."

"Cleon, I do want that.  But I don't think that I'm ready.  You should know that I just want to be a knight for a while. I don't want to become completely attached to someone that I might risk hurting by going to war.  And then there's kids.  Cleon, I'm just not ready."

"Kel, it will be worse if we didn't wed or become betrothed.  Then we would go into battles risking our lives wondering if we survive if we would still be able to be together.  But, Kel, I love you.  And I respect your choice.  I'll let you be; but if your worried about children slowing us, well mainly you, down.  Well, anything that you don't want to happen won't happen.  I'll leave now."

"No, Cleon, stay."  Kel whispered, tears running down her cheeks. 

Cleon slowly turned around, a worried look in his eyes.

"Kel?" he asked

.

"Oh, Cleon.  I didn't realize you cared so much.  But don't you want your name carried on?  And what about Mindelan, we need money."

"Kel, your parents don't care about the money, all they want is for their youngest daughter to be happy.  As for Kennen being carried on.  There is only one more person that I want to have that name.  And Keladry, my love, my one and only Queen of the knights, I want you to be Keladry of Kennen. If we were the last to Kennens to ever walk this wonderful land, I would be more than happy."

Tears streamed down Kel's face as she turned and buried her face in Cleon's shoulder, soaking his shirt.  Cleon stood and led Kel back to the manor.

"Wow, that person really loves her."  The second boy said in awe.

"Yeah, I've seen that Cleon person around.  He was Inness's squire, I think." The third boy stated quite gloomily.

"Aw, what's the matter Jeffrey? You like that Mindelan cow?"  The first boy teased his gloomy friend.

Jeffrey clenched his fists as a blush rose in his cheeks, he turned picked up the bag that they had brought to the river and dumped out the kittens at the rivers edge and marched off towards the village. 

"What did you do that for, Ross?" asked the third boy.

"Oh come on, I was just joking.  And any way Jeff doesn't like that ole cow, so I don't see why he got so angry."

"Well, if you didn't notice before, Jeff had been acting rather odd since she came home from the war.  I don't see how you could have missed it; I mean he was being really protective before."

"Brandon,  Brandon, Brandon, he was just acting that way because of what happened the last time we ran into her at a bad time, he wasn't being protective.  As for him acting weird, he's probably scared that we have several knights here when we're so close to the war with Scanra."

Brandon shook his head and looked at the little kittens thoughtfully.  After a few moments of silence Jeff came bursting through the brush, picked up the kittens and headed toward the manor.  Brandon looked up at Ross with that told you so look and quietly followed Jeff to see exactly what he was doing with those kittens.  Ross sighed aloud thinking that it wasn't possible that Jeff would bring those kittens to Keladry and claim that someone had tried to kill them just to get on her good side, it wasn't possible that Jeff, just a poor farmers boy could like Keladry.  A little voice in the back of his head said, well what about the Lioness and that George Cooper, he was just a commoner, a thieve at that!

"Oh great, now I have voices in my head and a conscience! This it not my day." Ross complained as he set off following his two friends.