"I loved her not for the way she danced with my angels but for the way the sound of her name could silence my demons." - Christopher Poindexter

America studied the map in front of her at the corner of the street. "The police station is down here," she told Aspen as she pointed to the road on her map. "La Calle Luna," she read, struggling with her Spanish.

Aspen nodded. "So we make a right onto this road, ride two blocks and then make a left?" He traced the route with his finger.

She checked. "Yeah, that looks good." They rode their rented bikes down the cobblestone roads, avoiding the pot holes. The streets were so narrow America wondered how anyone drove in the small city and couldn't help but stare every time they saw a car driving down the road.

They drove past a small shop and America stopped a few feet past it. "Hey, Aspen, I need to use the bathroom. I'll be right back."

He nodded. "You need me to go with you?"

"I think staying out here would suffice," she assured him, jumping off her bike and leaning it against the teal-painted building. She walked inside the stuffy store and looked around, looking for any sign for the bathrooms. She was trying to recall the way to ask where the bathroom was in Spanish when someone started speaking to her in Spanish.

She turned and saw a man standing at the register, his back to her as he arranged a display behind the counter. "Um…Puedo ir al baño?" she asked tentatively.

"En el vestíbulo, derecha segunda," he answered.

She bit her lip and hesitated. "Qué?"

He sighed and laughed. "Turistas." He shook his head. "Down the hallway, second right," he said in perfect English. There wasn't even a hint of a Spanish accent. Who was he calling her a tourist? He turned to get a look at her and stopped cold. "No way," he breathed.

She shook her head. "What?" she asked, wondering what he was staring at. She looked him in the eye and realized the reason for his amazement. She would recognize those eyes anywhere. He had dyed his hair brown and had a well-trimmed beard and a tan but he couldn't change his eyes. They were the same eyes her son had. The same eyes her supposedly dead husband had. "Maxon," she whispered.

He glanced at the door. "No, it's Damon," he corrected.

"You've been here this whole time?" she asked.

He shrugged, slightly nonchalant. "I speak the language pretty well…thought it would be a good place to lie low…" his voice trailed off at the gaze she had fixed on him. "You dyed your hair."

"Thought it would be a good way to lie low." Old anger boiled up inside her. "You just left without a single word to anyone, not even Christian or your mother. This is all your fault," she accused.

"No, Mer…"

"It's Constance," she cut him off. "I don't need the bathroom after all," she snapped, turning on her heel to walk out.

He dashed around the counter and pulled her back by the elbow. "No, don't go. I need to explain."

"Let go of me," she sneered. "Or I'll alert my guard standing right outside. I'm sure he'd love to know what has happened to his king." She pulled her arm free painfully and stormed out. Aspen was leaning against the wall whistling when she pushed past him on the narrow sidewalk. She got on her bike and ignored his questioning stare.

"What's wrong?" he asked, scrambling to get on his bike and to follow her. Maxon stood at the entrance to the shop and watched them ride down the street, the only thing preventing him from chasing after her was the painful memory of the picture of her kissing that guard.

She stopped to let a car drive across an intersection and looked at Aspen with tears in her eyes. "He's alive," she told him. "I knew it. I knew it from the beginning but I never really dared to hope because…because I didn't know where to find him. But I know now for sure that he's alive. And that he abandoned me." The tears started falling freely.

Aspen put a hand on her shoulder. She wiped the tears away angrily. "It's whatever though. I don't care anymore. I wanted an answer, I got it…now I can move on." She nodded to herself and rode her bike across the intersection, down to the main gate of the city.

He followed behind her quietly, knowing that she needed the space. Then he said, "I know you don't want to hear this, but I warned you about this from the start. I told you the guy is a phony."

She shook her head. "There's no way. You can't just act like you feel that way about someone."

"It's what he was born to do. It's how all royalty is. They are raised and taught how to be this other person in front of the cameras," he insisted.

She turned on him. "And what about behind the cameras? You're saying that he pretended then? What we did in our studies…in our bedroom, where no one is allowed to enter without our express permission…that was all an act?" she questioned. "And if what you're telling me is true, that someone really can be that falsely sincere, then how can I know that you're not doing the same thing?" Then she realized something. "That's it. You've been telling me all of this the whole time to drive a wedge between Maxon and me."

"Mer…" he started.

She pushed past him and started to hike up the big hill. "You've been feeding me all of this bullshit because you felt threatened. You knew that once I fell for Maxon you'd never get me back. I bet you let King Clarkson into the palace yourself!" she accused.

"Don't get extreme," he warned.

She laughed darkly before she heard a loud boom from somewhere in the city. She saw smoke hovering over the water by the gate. She ran down to the sea wall with Aspen right behind her. Looking up the cliffs and past the trees, she saw the elementary school on fire. "Oh my god," she whispered, abandoning her bike and running back through the gate and up the hill to the school.

"Mer! Mer, wait!" Aspen called, running after her desperately.

People started running away from the burning school, forcing America to push through the crowds. She jumped up on the tall stone wall that dropped onto jagged sea cliffs forty feet below on the other side and ran, avoiding the crowd. There were teachers dragging students out and from what she could tell the school was for young children.

"Niños en la escuela!" a hysterical woman ran up to America, telling her. "Ayudarles!" she shouted, her face covered in soot.

America dropped back down to the sidewalk but realized she would never be able to go through the doors to the school to get it; too many people were running out. The back of the school was burning and there had to be kids stuck back there. She climbed onto a low-lying branch that was from a tree in the play yard on the side of the school.

She dropped on the roof, watching her footing as she ran to the back of the school. The flames were licking at the roof, telling her that the roof would give out at any moment. She slid down a sloped section of the roof to the ground and kicked in the closest window. She jumped through and was stuck in a room full of smoke.

When she was inside, all she could hear was her own pounding heart, the roar of the fire, and the screaming kids. The door to the classroom was locked from the inside and she cursed. She picked up a few books and hurled them at the window and was able to slide through the narrow opening to the hallway.

The smoke was stuck in her lungs, making it hard to breathe. She made it to the next room and found a room full of children with no teacher. They gathered around her immediately but she noticed one girl looking faint. "Lo que está mal?" she asked the closest kid.

"Tiene asma!" a little girl with a nametag that said Loren answered. "No puede respirar bien!" She cuffed a hand around her throat to demonstrate, gathering that America didn't know a lot of Spanish.

America nodded and picked up the little girl in her arms. She wished Aspen had kept up with her when she felt the girl's weight. She was no Christian. America took off, leading the kids to the front of the school. A teacher was there and she immediately took the little girl from America. Without even thinking twice, America dashed back to get the rest of the kids in other classrooms.

She was definitely wheezing from the smoke now but she couldn't stop; she had to save those kids. It was harder to keep up with them this time as they ran down the hallway. She was just in sight of the doors when she started to have tunnel vision. Then she passed out in the burning hallway.

Yay, chapter 2! So excited! Don't forget what I said about the whole question thing. If you missed it, I said in the author's note for this book (the one that was up for approximately three weeks but I deleted to make room for the story that now I'm thinking I shouldn't have deleted after all) that if you have a question that's really awesome or quirky or really relates to this Fanfic, I will answer it before the chapter in addition to the quote. Questions can be anything from "Why did America have to sleep with Aspen in chapter one?" to "What's your hobby outside of writing, sleeping, eating and going to school?" (BTW, it's photography, snowboarding, being a hippie and working out =D) So yeah, I think that's all for now.

Just be totally awesome people and review.