Chapter Eleven: What You Are
As Adara left, her cheeks burning with the humiliation of having to admit her darkest secret, Dagonet caught up with her and fell into step beside her. The two walked together in silence for a while before Dagonet finally spoke.
"I'm sorry about Tristan, he hates the Woads. They killed one dear to him," Dagonet said, struggling for something to say.
Adara shrugged slightly. "Do not apologise for him. I hate the Romans as much as he hates my people, I think."
"Why?" Dagonet asked automatically, before silently cursing himself for speaking before he thought about his words.
Adara didn't mind though. In fact she was grateful that he had brought the subject up. She needed, desperately, to talk to someone. Her whole life had been built around concealing the secret, and it had burned into her soul.
"My mother fell in love with a Roman," she said in a scathing voice. "She gave herself to the enemy, and she spent the rest of her life living in humiliation. I ran away when I was twelve, started a new life, with a new name, where no one knew what I was. But still that Roman," she spat the word out as if it was a curse. "Ruined both my life and my mother's."
"You do not blame your mother?" Dagonet asked curiously.
"She was foolish to do what she did. But it was she who had to live out her life an outcast. She suffered for her mistakes, she paid for them."
"You hate all Romans." It was not a question but a simple statement.
"Each day my aim is to kill as many as I can before the sun goes down," Adara said flatly, and even Dagonet was scared by the hardness of her voice.
"Vanora's mother was a Woad, her father a Roman," Dagonet said, more out of want of something to say, rather than any particular reason, but somehow the simple statement lifted some of the shame Adara bore.
Dagonet glanced sideways at Adara. "You are what you have done, not what those around you did."
Adara looked at Dagonet, a small frown on her face. Suddenly, she smiled. "I'll never understand you people."
Dagonet shrugged. "Perhaps," he said quietly. "Perhaps."
A/N - Just a short chapter this time guys. I'm stuck in an ICT lesson and really should be doing some work but am seriously bored so I'm updating. It's a kinda random update, nothing to do with the storyline, just something to pass the time! Kepp reviewing please!