A storm cloud seemed to be following Hector from the moment they left the Dark Kingdom. A metaphorical one, and one that was confusingly literal.
Adira was used to the sky being overcast in the Dark Kingdom, but it didn't often rain there. She had hoped that the clear skies over the kingdom would last a little longer, so it was frustrating when she saw that the dark clouds had returned. At least they were just seasonal weather this time, and both Adira and Hector were both used to traveling during a storm.
Which was a good thing, because they'd left the Dark Kingdom more than a week ago, and it had yet to stop raining.
Adira was flabbergasted by this weather. It was like they were following a storm that refused to blow away. No matter how far they travelled, or how long they tried to wait it out, the rain didn't stop. Sometimes it eased to a light drizzle, and sometimes it stormed so hard that they couldn't see three feet ahead of them and continuing became impossible.
Adira had thought that there was just a massive storm in the area, but when they stopped in the occasional town to grab supplies they heard from the people there that the bad weather had apparently come out of nowhere. It was curious, and if Adira was on her own she would investigate and see if there was a curse or something in the area.
However, she wasn't alone. She had Hector, and his stormy attitude was almost worse than the actual weather. She had thought he had been sullen and moody before, but it was awful now. He shouted, and retreated in on himself, and refused to say a word about what was bothering him.
She really didn't know what was wrong. He may not have been released from his duty yet, and she could understand that was frustrating, but they were on their way to do just that. He had waited for twenty years already, what was another few months? And he wasn't alone anymore. Adira was right at his side, and she was careful to not leave his sight without at least giving him warning. They were on their way to reunite with Edmund and find a way to free Quirin. Shouldn't his mood lighten?
She was trying so hard to be patient, but it wasn't in her nature. She had lived in isolation nearly as much as Edmund and Hector had these past twenty five years. She'd had personal freedom, but she didn't interact with people unless it was absolutely necessary. She made exceptions for Hector and her other brothers, because they were family. That didn't make it any less exhausting though.
She knew that Hector needed her companionship, but she needed her space. When they had passed the Great Tree, going around it at Hector's request, they were near his animals. Adira wanted to just grab them and be on their way, but Hector was nervous. He claimed that he was tired and needed sleep. Adira didn't believe it for a second, but he curled up on the ground and faced away from her, refusing to so much as acknowledge her when she tried to talk to him.
She had forgotten how much he could behave like a child.
She sat on a nearby rock under the cover of trees and meditated. Why couldn't Hector have at least sucked it up and walked another twenty minutes so they could at least find cover in the cave that he said his bearcats were hiding away in?
Adira meditated until she saw Hector's body ease. The rain calmed slightly, turning to just a drizzle with high winds. Adira gave her brother one more anxious look before she quietly got to her feet and started to make her way towards the cliffs.
She knew she shouldn't leave Hector alone, but she was feeling stifled always being right at his side when he couldn't even bring himself to talk to her. She didn't blame him, but if she was going to get through this journey without throttling him, she needed some space.
Hector seemed to be asleep now. It was the perfect opportunity. She took her time, just enjoying the closest thing she'd been able to get to simple weather, as well as a break from her brother.
She always enjoyed her solitude, which made her very aware of the smallest noise or movement that could disturb that. She just the sound of a stick breaking behind her, and that was enough for her to whirl around, expecting trouble. She'd half expected to see Hector, and instead found herself face to face with a stranger.
"You look lost, missy." The man said. Adira had already decided that she didn't like him from the second she had laid eyes on him, just because her default when meeting people was to decide that she didn't like them. As soon as he opened his mouth, it validated her first assumptions.
"Even if I was, that would be none of your business." Adira coldly. "Go away."
"I'm just being nice." The man said. He shifted ever so slightly to show off the dagger beneath his vest. It looked rusty and too heavy for a man of this size. It was also foolish for him to hide an unsheathed dagger in a place that would be so easy for him to hurt himself. This man wasn't a warrior or a fighter. He only had the dagger in an attempt to be intimidating.
He was probably a bandit. Adira couldn't remember the last time someone had tried to steal from her. If this man thought that he was going to be getting anywhere with her, he was sadly mistaken.
Adira hadn't brought her sword with her. She'd left it behind with Hector, because she hadn't thought she would need it. She still didn't think she needed it, but it would at least help to get this man to back off. It would make things much simpler.
"I'm giving you one more chance to walk away." Adira warned. The man didn't back off. He just smirked.
"Cute." The man mocked. He pulled out his dagger and took a step towards her. She didn't retreat. She really didn't think she needed to. The bandit looked a little flustered, but he probably thought that he'd come too far to back down.
He lunged towards her. She easily stepped to the side and rounded a kick at him to disarm him. The altercation ended before it even started.
She knocked him to the ground and picked up the dagger. "Maybe next time you try to target somebody you make sure that they don't know how to protect themselves." The man glowered at her, but he didn't get up from the ground. It almost seemed like he was waiting for something. Adira saw his gaze shift just a touch to the side, and for a split second he was looking over her shoulder instead of at her.
Adira frowned, not turning around. She wasn't going to make such an amateur mistake as to fall for such a simple trick. She was ready to destroy this man and send him on his way, hopefully after grounding it into his thick skull that he shouldn't go after people like this.
Suddenly Adira saw a sword run past her side and strike right through the heart of the bandit. His eyes went wide and he made a pained, breathless groan, and then the life left his eyes.
Adira whirled around, expecting to see Hector, but instead she saw a younger man who was barely more than a child. The boy resembled the bandit, and was probably a relative. His hands were shaking, but Adira was alarmed at the look in his eyes. The boy's eyes were pale, but Adira could see lightning reflected in them. She hadn't even noticed that the storm had picked up again, and yet the boy's eyes had so much light that they almost seemed yellow.
The boy lifted his sword and slowly turned it towards himself as tears started to fall from his eyes. Too late Adira realized what he was doing.
"No, wait!" Adira reached out for the boy just as he stabbed the sword into his own chest. His eyes rolled to the back of his head as he fell forward, past Adira and onto his relative.
Adira stared in horror at the two bandits. It had all happened so quickly. She didn't notice the wind had picked up, almost feeling strong enough to knock her off her feet. The skies were so dark that they were almost black. When she finally pulled her eyes away from the bodies at her feet she could see the lightning in the sky. It looked less like flashes and more like a full illumination of the sky.
"Adira!" Hector seemed to show up out of nowhere. He grabbed her arm and spun her around. She flinched. The tingles that she felt on her skin were sharp and almost painful, like it was a strong amount of static electricity instead of just her distaste for touch.
"What were you thinking?" Hector growled at the same time as thunder rumbled across the sky.
"I just needed some space." Adira said. "I was only gone for a few minutes."
"And just look at what happened." Hector gestured at the bodies. "You could have gotten hurt."
Adira couldn't help but scoff. "You underestimate me, Brother, if you think I'd let myself be taken down so easily by two common criminals."
Hector's eyes flashed as a streak of lightning came down from the sky and struck the ground far too close for comfort. Adira could feel and smell the electricity in the air, but she was far more afraid of her brother than of the weather.
She had wondered for some time if Hector's mood mirrored the weather. For the first time she was wondering if it was actually the other way around.
"You couldn't have protected yourself from the enemy that you couldn't see." Hector said lowly. She wondered how she could even hear him over the sound of the storm. "By the time you would have realized what had happened, you would be gone."
Adira was frustrated with herself for not noticing the boy with the sword, but she walked away from it. She wasn't hurt. She certainly wasn't dead. What was the point in lingering on what might have happened?
"I don't understand why you're making a big deal of this." Adira said. "I've had close calls before. If I stopped to stress about it all the time, I'd never do anything with my life."
"If you won't stop and think about it, you're going to run out of luck at some point, and then you won't have a life to do anything with!"
"Since when are you such a coward when it comes to death?" Adira asked. "You were the one who seemed to have a death wish as a child." He was always running around, giving Edmund and Quirin a heart attack as he climbed onto the castle roof, and picking fights with warriors that were twice his age and size.
Hector grew still, a terrifying darkness in his eyes. When he finally moved it was just to look up at the sky, where the rain was falling. Adira could recognize the look in his eyes. He seemed to be seeing something that wasn't really there."
"You don't know what I've been through." Hector said coldly. He sounded more upset than angry at this point. "You don't know."
"So tell me." Adira said. "What happened to make you so scared of death?" Even as Adira asked, she realized that she knew the answer. Hector must have had an experience with death. Either he'd seen somebody that he actually care about die, which Adira had a hard time believing because she didn't think he cared about anybody outside of the Brotherhood. Or he'd almost died himself.
Though Adira was so casual about her own experience, she felt something in her tighten anxiously at the thought of something happening to Hector.
"What happened? Adira asked quietly.
Hector blinked. The wind was whipping around him, and he didn't look like he cared at all. "We were going after a trespasser." Hector said. "It was something we had done hundreds of times. Even though it was raining, we didn't think twice about it. We…we should have."
Hector closed his eyes. "The ground was wet, and we were going too fast. I was riding on my rhino, and she slipped. She fell, and then we both fell, and we just wouldn't stop falling." He opened his eyes and looked at the cliffs above them. Adira followed his gaze, and she realized just how high up the cliff was. She couldn't imagine anybody surviving that fall.
"It hurt." Hector's voice shook. "I couldn't move. I couldn't even call for help. Even if I could, who would come?" Hector let out a dry laugh. "You know, for five years before that, I had waited for you guys to come back. Every day I told myself that you would see the error of your ways. That you guys would come back, and we would be a family again."
"We've always been a family." Adira said urgently. She needed him to understand that. Hector just shook his head.
"Family's there for each other." Hector said. "That day, I needed you guys. I needed you more than I ever did in my whole life. I laid there on the ground forever, waiting for someone to find me. To take me home. But nobody came. I was alone."
Adira swallowed thickly, pushing back the thought that if Hector had landed on just a slightly different angle then she would have lost him forever. And she would have had no way of knowing. A body could completely decompose in twenty years, leaving behind just a skeleton. Even if she found him, she wouldn't have recognized him at all.
If Hector hadn't been at the Great Tree, Adira would have looked for him, certainly, but only for so long. Eventually she would have convinced herself that he'd moved on with his life, and was happy somewhere new. She would have been content with never seeing her brother again, with no idea that he had died.
Adira wasn't a crier. She had so much to do with her life that she didn't see the point in wasting time on tears. But Hector was her brother. He was her family, and she'd almost lost him.
Tears came to Adira's eyes, and she didn't bother brushing them away. She needed to hold her brother. She needed to prove to herself that he was fine.
She stepped towards Hector and pulled him into her arms. He stiffened and made a move like he wanted to pull away, but he held still. Eventually he leaned against her. His touches were as uncomfortable and nearly painful as before, but she didn't care. At least he was there. At least she had him.
"Adira?" Hector's voice cracked.
"You're okay." Adira said, like she was just trying to convince herself. "You're okay."
Hector paused, and it seemed like he wanted to say something. After a long moment he sighed and shook his head. "Yeah, I'm fine." Adira could tell by his tone of voice that there was more to it, but she didn't know if she could handle hearing more. She wouldn't be able to take it.
Finally, Adira let go of Hector, though he didn't seem like he wanted to step away. She would hold him more, but she didn't want to be near this cliff, and she didn't think he liked it very much either. They needed to get his animals and get away from this cursed place.
"Let's get your friends." Adira said. His bearcats were nearby. As soon as that thought crossed Adira's mind, and she remembered a detail of Hector's story, she felt like she was going to cry all over again. "Your rhino, is she…?"
Hector shook his head. "She was gone on impact." He wrapped his arms around himself. "At least she didn't suffer the way I did."
After everything that had happened, Adira could understand why he had been so angry about her close call. She would probably act the same way if he had brushed off his accident the way that she had.
"I'm sorry." Adira said. She didn't say what for. She knew that he would understand what she meant.
"It-" He grimaced and shook his head, trailing off. He didn't say that it was fine, because they both knew that it wasn't. "Go back and get your things. I'm going to get the bearcats. I'll meet you back here in a few minutes."
She didn't want to leave him alone for a moment, but he was asking for space. He needed some time to compose himself, and she could relate to that.
"Just…be careful." Adira said. His accident may have happened twenty years ago, and he was clearly fine now, but she couldn't brush off what could have been. "And I'll be careful too." She didn't want to ever make Hector feel the way she felt now. He gave her a small smile.
"It's a deal." He turned and walked closer to the cliff, towards the caves. She desperately wanted to follow him, but she made herself turn back towards where she'd left him before. At the very least she needed her sword. From this point on she needed to protect herself and Hector. No more reckless behavior.
She just hoped that Corona was just as happy and disgustingly bright as it had seemed to be. She didn't think their family could handle anymore tragedy right now. Surely whatever was awaiting them ahead couldn't be any worse than what they were leaving behind.