I haven't given up on this story. I've just been temporarily grounded by many things: lack of time, lack of inspiration, etc…However, some spurts of ideas have finally been released by my muse and I have two brand-new chapters to bestow upon thee. These are not quite what I promised in my author's notes of last chapter, but that's what happens when you write as the ideas come to you.

This chapter centers mainly on Rose, but has a bit of Radon in it. The next chapter is almost completely Ellie-centric. She needed a little bit of time in the spotlight, I decided.

Both chapters are relatively short for me. But they just didn't flow well when combined into one. Therefore, I split them into two and it just looks better.

The girl watched the boy splash in the seawater as it roiled over the shoreline of the rocky beach and receded in slow succession. The salty sea breeze whipped her amber-brown hair around her face and ruffled the dark curls of the child she watched over. His small green trousers were pulled up halfway past his shins so they would not get wet and his feet were bare. He was a small child, only about three or four years old at the most. His hair was a mass of thick spiraling curls that were the color of pure ebony and bounced about as the boy played. He was so beautiful; the girl's heart would melt in bittersweet nostalgia every time she looked upon him.

The child turned toward her and came running with his arms outstretched. The girl, wearing rolled up trousers herself, caught him up in her arms and swung him around, high above her head. Her well-muscled arms could easily have tossed him a good distance into the water had she wanted to.

"I want to swim!" the boy pleaded. His eyes were a dark shade of golden-hazel, like her eyes.

"Sorry, love," she replied, swinging him onto her hip, "it's too cold to swim. When summer comes next year, I'll take you swimming in the river. I promise."

The youngster pouted and wriggled out of her arms to wade around in the salty water. The girl edged out of the water and farther up the beach to watch from a drier vantage point. The setting sun's reflection turned the blue of the ocean waters into a brilliant expanse of gold, green, and blue all swirling together in an enormous pallet. She turned to glance behind her at the rocky cliff wall rising hundreds of feet upwards. The cliff converged at a narrow point, which jutted out noticeably, almost as if were about to break away and crash to the ground.

The hair on her arms and on the back of her neck stood up on end. A nauseous fear clutched at her heart and made her swallow the thick spout of bile that suddenly rose into her throat. She had no inkling of why she had gone from being happily content to deathly afraid in the space of seconds, but she instantly snapped to her feet. She tried to spot the child so she could take him away from this unseen danger. What she saw, or, rather, what she did not see, caused her entire body to go rigid with fright.

The boy had disappeared.

Her breath caught in her throat as an icy numbness spread over her body. When she recovered her airway, it occurred to her that she should call out for the child. The iciness of the sensations assaulting her person was doubled in intensity when she realized she did not know the child's name. She knew it once, but now it was lost; it was embedded deep within her mind to where she could not reach. The name had literally been on the tip of her tongue, but had dissipated the moment she had been about to say it.

No. Please. I must remember. I must find him!

She started walking towards the water, but soon broke out into a full-speed run, thinking he had perhaps gone swimming. Although it was a terrifying notion to think that he might be drowning, she could probably reach him in time. The turbulent ocean water was far colder than it had been a few minutes before when all she had been doing was wading in it. The frigid liquid stung her skin most painfully, but she continued to tread farther out in crazed desperation. Tears were falling freely from her eyes, but she did not notice. She had progressed so far out that soon she had to actually swim to keep afloat.

Her frantic, roving eyes caught sight of something shiny floating in the water not far from her. She quickly swam towards it, the freezing salty water slapping her ruthlessly in the face. If she kept her limbs moving, perhaps she could stall the hypothermia that was beginning to take over her body.

Keep moving. Don't stop moving. Don't stop. It hurts so much. It's so cold.

The shiny object was actually a necklace, a golden chain with a small diamond-shaped charm. She reached out to grab it, but before her fingers could even make contact she was pulled underneath the water. She struggled wildly, kicking her legs as hard as she could and waving her arms around. Even so, she continued to sink deeper and deeper beneath the surface as her oxygen level decreased drastically. Water filled her mouth and flew up into her nostrils. Still, she continued fighting, kicking, and waving her arms around. She could not give into the death that beckoned her. She was needed.

"Rose!"

Someone had hold of her. Panic seized her and she fought even harder to break free of her assailant. She managed to wrestle her left arm free and raised it to thrust the heel of her palm right into her attacker's nose. It was an instinctive maneuver, but a well-known self-defense tactic.

"Rose, stop! Ow!"

Suddenly the arms holding her arms were pulled back and Rose, still half ensconced in her nightmares, toppled out of her bed. She crab-scrabbled across the carpet and pulled herself up against the desk. She was gasping for breath as if she had been deprived of it all her life; her chest was rising and falling at a rapid pace and her heart beat furiously. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the bedchamber her befuddled mind began to clear. The nightmarish haze lifted from her eyes and she saw, very clearly, that she was not at a beach and she was not, in fact, drowning. It had been naught but a dream. Relief caused her legs to sag and she gripped the desk for support.

"I think you might've broken my nose! Damn, that's quite an arm you've got! Where'd you learn how to throw a swing like that?" came the bemused voice of the one who had been trying to shake her awake.

The voice sounded familiar, but she was still a little groggy from just waking up entirely that she could not quite figure out whose it was. She hazarded a guess.

"Tristan?"

"Not quite, but I'm sure I'll need him to fix this. It's me." The stranger stood up, his tall body silhouetted against her four-poster. He stepped forward into the moonlight shining in through the window (she had forgotten to shut the curtains). She frowned in perplexity when she saw that it was Radon.

"Radon? What are you doing in my bedchamber? In the middle of the night, for that matter?" she questioned, bound and determined to keep her voice steady. She suddenly felt tremendously exposed in the thin silk nightgown, which was pure white in color. It was thin in material and the only thing between the outside world and her sensitive, pale, naked skin. Having a male in the room when she was so close to being bare was making her face grow very hot and red. She detested blushing, especially when it was she who was doing it.

"Oh, certainly, do not think of apologizing for hitting me," he returned. His voice had the odd, amusing tone of one who is either holding his nose or is suffering from a severe cold.

His words evoked a strong reaction from her. She bristled with indignation and intense annoyance at the boy's impertinence. How dare he speak to her like that? As soon as she thought of it, she became contrite with herself. What right had she to think such things or even speak them? He was a prince and kin to the monarchs of the kingdom where she was naught but a nameless guest who knew next to nothing about her past. Be that is it may, it was very improper to barge into a lady's room while she was so scantily clad. And it was also rather embarrassing.

She bowed her head and apologized in a remorseful tone. "Forgive me, Your Highness. You startled me, is all."

"Gee, Rose, you don't know sarcasm when you hear it?" he teased her, smiling that irritatingly sexy smirk of his. "Besides, I don't think you broke my nose. Came damn close though. I'm actually impressed."

Rose did not dwell on the fact that he was impressed with her hitting skills or that she had not broken his nose. He was being sarcastic? The bastard! Here she was getting all worked up and worried that she had truly offended him and/or hurt him when he had just been playing with her. She did not particularly enjoy being played with. She promptly decided the sprouts of friendly feelings toward him were to be destroyed immediately.

Radon almost laughed at the expression on her face, but then he remembered Tristan's words in the letter describing Rose's "fearsome, mercurial temper". If one put that together with the fact that she could throw a punch rather well for a girl of her size, then he would learn quickly that this was a girl one did not want to anger unduly. It was those thoughts that forced him, rather reluctantly, to tear his gaze away from her enticing form. Her pale skin was bathed in the silver moonlight and the scars she wore as testament to the past that had slipped from memory--but not from reality—glowed even more brightly than the regular, unblemished skin.

Radon could not fathom the reason, but he found Rose to be so mysteriously lovely when, in retrospect, there were legions of young women whose beauty eclipsed hers. She was rather lean for his particular tastes—he always did prefer the buxom, curvaceous women, not stick figures. Yet, he figured, with time and Mandy's superb cooking she would fill out nicely. No, it was not her physical appearance that completely enthralled him in the short amount of time he had known her. Though her physical appearance did have serious potential, he was not denying that. And she certainly looked far more tempting in the white silk nightgown clinging to her skin than in a blue gown.

Perhaps it was the allure of her mysterious past and the bizarre circumstances surrounding her discovery and arrival to Kyrria that attracted him so. Those enigmatic gold-green eyes were so evocative of fear, uncertainty, vulnerability, and the more subtle gleams of determination and strength. Her eyes were like magnets drawing him in ever closer to the point of no return. He would very much like to learn the secrets those eyes hid from the world and herself. Yet, like Rose, he was also afraid of what he might learn.

"What do you want?" Rose inquired, hugging herself. Her fury from before was abating, which was a relief since getting very angry quickly was always a drain on energy.

Radon shuffled his feet as he searched for a satisfying explanation so as not to incur her wrath again. The prince was a long-time sufferer of insomnia and woke up often during the night. Instead of lying in his bed trying to get back to sleep after imbibing sleeping potions, he dressed and walked the winding corridors of whatever place he happened to be staying in. It was a habit everyone in his family had become quite accustomed to.

It was by simple coincidence that he had been walking by Rose's private quarters when he had heard the alarming noises from within. He had never actually heard someone struggling in the throes of a nightmare, but he had assumed rightly that it was what was occurring in the bedchamber. He burst into the room to find the girl thrashing about wildly on her bed, screaming and moaning in terror. Tears had been streaming down her face and she kept spouting out incomprehensible words.

He had remained, stunned and motionless, in the doorway for a moment, fearful of approaching the struggling girl. His concern for her eventually won out and he quickly tried to shake her awake to release her from her nightmare. He had certainly not expected her to fight him so viciously. For someone who did not look it, she was quite strong. Though he did not want to admit it to her, he was just as shaken, perhaps even more so, as she was after seeing that.

Rose felt her ire weaken when Radon apologetically explained how he came to be here. She supposed his reasons were justified and was even somewhat grateful he had been there to waken her from her nightmare. Still, she was practically naked here and he was quite the handsome fellow. Perhaps he would like to—she gasped aloud and clapped her hand over her mouth at the sheer audacity of her own thoughts. Really, she had not intended for her thoughts to go that direction and was plainly horrified. It was a damn good thing she had not said those aloud.

Radon was quite confused. "What's wrong?"

She reddened and paced across the room to the bed. How could she look him in the eye now?

"Nothing."

Silence. Radon just shook with silent laughter. It was obvious she was embarrassed about something.

"You're full of shit, you know that?" Radon said, amused by her behavior.

"Look, it's late and I'm very tired. I've had the nightmare from hell and I would just like to go back to sleep. Though that probably doesn't make sense, since I could dream it again, but I'm willing to risk it," she snapped, not amused by his behavior.

Radon looked disappointed at her subtle request for him to leave. He had wanted to hear what her nightmare was about and perhaps gain some insight into who she really was. He pursed his lips and sat down on the bed beside her feet.

"I was hoping you'd want to talk about your nightmare. Maybe it'll help to talk about it," he suggested softly.

Rose scowled at the prince sitting on her bed. Did he not understand when a lass wanted to be alone? A little voice inside whispered to her of the questionable wisdom of unleashing her thoughts and fears, especially on a prat like this one here. However, maybe if she told someone about it she could make more sense of it. Just bringing up the sight of the boy-child from her dreams awakened a deep aching in her soul. She had no doubt that her dream was a vision, twisted or clear, of her past. She needed to hear herself speaking about it out loud to sort through it all. She needed to know, though Radon could not give her the answer, who the boy was.

"I…I was at a beach, but I wasn't swimming. There was a little boy running around, just wading through the foamy surf. He had black, curly hair, but his eyes…his eyes were like mine. I was just sitting on the beach, watching him and I turned around for just a second…"

Radon listened raptly and his keen brown eyes were rife with compassion as she relived the dream that had transgressed into nightmare territory very rapidly. He resisted the urge to grasp her hand and squeeze it in support lest she take it for a less honorable intention. He did not want to cause her any more stress than what she had already suffered. He watched the tears well up in her golden hazel eyes—such a lovely color, he mused—when she recalled how she could not remember the boy's name. He could sense the extreme sorrow pervading her being at not being able to remember the name of someone who was obviously very important to her.

"It was so awful. I don't even think there was anyone pulling me under the water; I was just sinking, and I was drowning. I thought I was going to die," she recounted, her voice full of the remembered terror.

Radon sighed in sympathy and laid a hand on her shoulder. He wanted to do something, anything, to relieve the anguish she must have been experiencing. But this sort of thing was not his area of expertise and he found himself at a loss. He did not know what he could say that would make her feel better. He was afraid of saying something that would sound tasteless and inappropriate (which he often made the mistake of doing).

After sitting there for a few minutes in silence, Radon let his curiosity do the talking.

"How old was the boy?" he inquired.

Rose sniffled and wiped an errant tear from her eye and thought over the question. She brought the image of the boy up in her mind, as crystal clear as the sky in her dream, and made an estimate.

"He was quite young. Only about three or four years old, I would say." She gazed at Radon, watching his face scrunch up as he thought this over. She wondered what he was thinking about.

"You said his eyes were the same as yours. I'm guessing he was related to you. Perhaps a brother," he said to her. The odd tone of voice in which he said those words made Rose shiver disagreeably for some unfathomable reason.

"Perhaps," she replied.

"It would certainly explain the eyes and how much love I felt for him. But there was something else I felt when I looked upon him," she murmured thoughtfully.

"What was that?" Radon asked.

She closed her eyes and brought her hand up to her breast, right over her heart. "I felt saddened. It's like when you look upon someone you love, but they remind you of someone else and it makes you really sad."

Radon said nothing in response to this, but continued to study Rose, his chocolate eyes moving up and down her form. As when she had first met him, his gaze was not lascivious or suggestive, he was merely studying her in an objective sort of way. He scratched his chin, dotted with blonde stubbles, and continued scrutinizing her.

Finally, Rose became antsy with curiosity and asked, "What?"

Radon looked supremely uncomfortable and hesitant, but he decided to tell her his deductions about the child from her dreams. "Well, I'd say you're around Tristan and Lilly's age of seventeen. You might even be a bit older, but I doubt it. If the child is as young as you say he looked…" he trailed off there, losing his fine command of words. He was afraid he would offend the girl if he told her what he had been thinking.

"What do you mean?" Rose asked; her brow furrowed in confusion.

Radon waved his hands around and gestured to her stomach awkwardly. Normally, subjects like these came to him with such ease—much to his mother's displeasure—but he found it extremely difficult to speak of it with Rose when it actually involved the girl herself. She cocked an eyebrow at his weird behavior and looked down at her stomach, her hands unconsciously grasping it. When he pantomimed rocking a baby in his arms, she gasped when the veil of confusion lifted and his meaning was made glaringly clear.

"You think," she sputtered, flushing bright red with mortification, "that he was my child! I would have had to been thirteen or fourteen!"

Radon shrugged helplessly and subtly shuffled farther away from her, not wishing for her to give him another blow to his nose and achieving breakage. He need not have worried because Rose was far too flustered at the moment to give any thought of inflicting violence. She would have dismissed the possibility as utterly ridiculous immediately, had not some little voice been tickling the back of her brain. It kept whispering to her of how she had felt when she had looked at the child. The affection she had felt was more akin to that between a mother and her son, not a sister and her younger brother.

"It's happened before. I've heard of girls even younger than that giving birth. And, you have to admit, when filled out, I'm sure you had fine child-bearing hips." Once he said those last words, he instantly regretted it. He put his hands up to protect his face at the attack he predicted was coming.

He predicted wrongly, as Rose was too swamped by her own thoughts at the moment to really notice him. She was twisting her hands around absently as she struggled to recall every detail about the boy and try to fit him to someone he reminded her of.

Goddamned amnesia!

She then shook her head and looked back to Radon. "If I had borne a child, I'm sure Jasmine or any of the other women that examined me would have noticed and told me about it. Bearing a child that young, it has to show some sort of sign. Tearing and stretch marks and the like."

Radon grimaced at the consequences of young motherhood and childbearing in general. Being of the half of the human species that could not bring forth life—well, not bring it forth directly—he simply could not understand how women could go through all of that. It certainly was one of the many aspects that gifted him with a deep and abiding respect for the fairer sex. Men certainly went through their fair share of wounds, pains, and injuries in battles and accidents and the like. Women, on a smaller scale, suffered those as well. But one did not see many a man wishing for such a calamity to be visited upon him. And yet, almost every girl he knew could not wait to become mothers in spite of the extreme difficulty and pain that came with carrying and bearing children. Women he knew who had borne children, his aunts and his mother mostly, often told him the pain was worth it. They forgot the agony of bringing their children forth when they held their newborn in their arms.

His Aunt Ella had even borne twins! It was difficult enough carrying one baby, but to carry two at the same time amounted to sheer impossibility in Radon's mind.

"Well, I think it would be worth a try to ask," Radon suggested casually.

Rose wordlessly shook her head, too lost in her thoughts to respond verbally. She had her hands folded in her lap, though she kept unfolding them and folding them all over again absently. Her thoughts were completely filled with the shady memories of her nightmare and the few images she had of her past. She gasped when she realized she remembered something from her ordeal—something significant in regards to the child from her dream. The emotions she could recall amounted to fear, pain, shock, outrage, and anguish while the thick, rancid odors of smoke, fire, and blood assaulted her other sense. She distinctly remembered screaming—both of the female and male variety. She brought up every horrific broken scene, every shattered piece to try and string together, but they did not flow easily. There were far too many gaps between those shards to make a full picture out of. But there was one thing she did recall and the memory of it caused buried horror and grief to grip her heart.

She remembered the sensation of a hand, a small child-like hand, slipping from her own hand. No, she did not remember the sensation per se. It was the emotions she could recall that conjured up the sensation; she could recall the event itself and thereby resurrect the feeling. She lifted up her right hand and tears welled in her eyes—it had been from this hand that the child's hand had been wrenched away. The boy from her dream—he must have been that child! Her hand began to shake as irrepressible anger and anguish overwhelmed her; tears again drenched her already dampened cheeks.

Radon was astonished by her sudden change of mood. She had gone from being indignant and flustered to shaking with sobs of furious grief. He watched with concerned eyes as she brought her trembling right hand to her chest, squeezed her eyes shut and lay back on her bed. A keening wail, though muffled by the pillows, met his ears and he felt his heart crack with sympathy.

"Rose? What is it?" His hand hovered over her form, as if unsure of whether he should touch her or not.

"Please, Radon, just go," she replied in a broken voice.

Radon, crestfallen, lowered his hand just a hair's width away from grazing her trembling shoulder. "But—"

"Leave me alone!" she cried.

The young man flinched away with a hurt expression. He sighed in resignation when he realized nothing he could say or do at the moment would alleviate her grief. It was best just to leave her be and let her deal with it in her own way. Besides, his mother had always told him it was never wise to argue with a lady in distress. More often than not, it tended to exacerbate the situation. Therefore, it was a most reluctant young man who quietly backed out of the bedchamber and shut the door behind him, leaving the weeping girl alone inside.

Tsk, tsk…does little Rose carry some kind of a secret even she doesn't know about?