"Rayla?" Ezran called to the elf who sat a little bit away, examaning her swords.
Callum was sitting by a large tree, working on another drawing, too far away and absorbed in his drawing to hear them.
"What is it?" Rayla asked without looking up and Ezran flinched at her harsh tone.
Sensing the younger boy's distress Rayla forced herself to relax and turned around to face him.
"What is it, Ezran?" she asked again, doing her best to sound gentle.
"I... I just wanted to know... Well, Callum doesn't really trust you a lot." he blurted and right away regretted it with the way Rayla winced.
"Yeah, I kinda figured that wouldn't come easy after I chased him around the castle." she huffed, avoiding eye-contact.
"But I wanted to ask-" Ezran continued, getting her attention again, "Why do you trust us?"
This made her look back at him in surprise.
"What?" she simply asked.
"Why do you trust us? I mean, you trust us right?" he asked uncertainly.
Rayla couldn't help but smile at that and nodded.
"I trust you, Ez." she confirmed.
"But why? I mean, you could have just taken the egg yourself and left me and Callum behind but you still took us with you and haven't eben tried to take the egg." the prince asked and she frowned.
He was right, after all.
She could have just taken the egg left on her own, moving much quicker and smoother without any detours instead of dragon two humans (and a glowtoad) along.
"Hope." she finally answered.
"Huh? What?" Erzan asked, blinking those big blue eyes.
"Hope." Rayla repeated, "I trust you because I have hope."
"My whole life I hear stories about all the terrible things humans did and how Xadia took revenge to which humans took revenge again. As soon as I saw the egg I realized we didn't have to take revenge and I want everyone to know so."
She looked at him intensely, determination in her own purple eyes, "I'm hoping that if you guys, the human princes, bring the egg, we won't have to ever take revenge again. I'm hoping we can stop all the pain and suffering."
She then sighed sadly, "Hope is all I have left either way since I betrayed my team. Maybe I'm even hoping they'll be proud of me after all this is done."
"I know they'll be proud of you." Ezran told her, taking one of her hands into his own.
"And I also don't hope we can do this. I know we can." he told her, gripping her hand tightly as he stood tall and sure of himself, like he had seen his father do many times.
Rayla stared back in for a moment before smiling.
"You're right. We will do this." she nodded, gripping back before using her other hand to ruffle the boy's wild hair.
"Come on, I think we rested enough for the moment. Let's go get that brother of your's and get this egg home!" she announced, getting up.
"Okay!" Erzan cheered and with that ran to get Callum.