The Moon Goddess' Chosen

458 A Message In The Wind

Honour was still holding Drake when Crysta placed her hand on her shoulder, “Hey… Honour,” the girl spoke in a soothing voice, “He needs to get treatment.”

“I could…”

“Not in that way… Not in front of so many. He wouldn’t want that. None of us would. Just like Mady, you’re to remain hidden,” this part of the conversation happened through the mind link.

Crysta’s words seemed to whisper some sense into the girl’s mind. Honour reluctantly allowed the paramedics to take the prince away from her. However, she remained rooted to the spot.

Her hands were stained with the black bizarre liquid that had mixed with the blood on the prince’s clothes. There were different scents mixed within the different fluids on the girl’s hands.

And some of them didn’t belong to the prince.

Cole walked up to the girls and greeted them. Crysta greeted him back… and so did Bree, but Honour remained silent. Madeline knelt down before her petrified friend, “Hey, Honour, we should get going. We could wait for him in the hospital while they work on getting him better.”

“Hmm,” was Honour’s response. The Seeker was ready to take what she could get. With Bree’s help, they helped the girl up and guided her back to the Great Arena. The journey was much longer without having any form of transportation but they were fine with it.

Honour needed the walk.

.....

.......

The beeping sound coming from the machine that was monitoring the prince’s vitals pained the young goddess’s ears. The smell of medicine, the scent of blood and the alluring scent of his presence assailed her nostrils.

Reminding her constantly of his condition… and yet, there seemed to be nothing she could do about it.

The girls had only just been allowed to come to see him after the royal family was done, “How is he doing?” Honour asked no one in particular. She merely wanted an answer.

“The doctors say he has sustained a lot of damage and the strain his muscles have been through is tremendous, not to mention the amount of blood that he’s already lost. There were signs of blood loss along with several other odd scars on his body. Some of them didn’t make sense…

They looked fresh… and yet the bite mark on his shoulder were showing no signs of healing,” the king explained as best he could.

Honour looked about the room. Lina was not yet present… “Where is Lina?”

“Lina is resting. When she was able to calm down and tell us what happened, she passed out almost immediately. It seems the girl was more exhausted than she was letting on,” the queen frowned, “It seems my children have a knack for getting into trouble.”

“Did she hear the announcement?”

“She did… but we convinced her not to worry about it. I didn’t give her much of a choice,” the queen replied. However, this time, she made her way to the girl, “How are you holding up, dear?”

Honour’s chest felt numb. She didn’t want to feel anything anymore. The beeping sound invaded her ears once more, reminding her of the state Drake was in.

What hurt, even more, was that she hadn’t even noticed or sensed anything amiss. She couldn’t help.

If she had been present when he was attacked, she probably would have caused him to worry about her and got him killed… or she could have miraculously accessed her powers and saved them both.

Those were her thoughts on the matter but she didn’t want to believe them.

When she tried to think beyond Drake or Lina, her thoughts got far more jumbled and her emotions threatened to turn her into a bawling mess, so she resorted to focusing on the two people she was worried about.

“I’m fine, your majesty,” Honour replied, failing in her attempt to smile.

The Queen frowned, “Drake will be fine. And Lina even more so…” the queen paused, took her hands off the girl’s shoulders and wandered to the seat by her son’s side, “It’s not like this is far from the outcome Drake hoped for.”

Honour tried to fend off the deluge of thoughts that threatened to break through her mind. The divine energy that normally swirled through her body began to swarm in waves, washing through her body and empowering her in ways she was not used to. It seemed any new information only stirred an unnecessary reaction.

Given the chance to find who had done this to Drake, Honour wasn’t sure how much she would be able to hold back. “What do you mean by that? Was he planning to have himself beat up?”

“No, he was planning to have Lina win the Trials so that he wouldn’t participate in this year’s games,” the queen responded, oblivious to the girl that was about to break into a rage.

This rage, however, simmered down the moment the queen had clarified her words. It was replaced with painful curiosity, “Why would Drake do such a thing?” Crysta asked.

It was now that Honour was acknowledging the presence of those around her. After Drake had been taken from her arms, she’d tuned everything out, but the world was starting to get more and more perceptible to her.

“The Trials decide who is more suited to take the throne. So it would make sense if he intentionally lost to Lina, however, we still don’t know why he decided to step down. He didn’t say the reason why he did what he did.

We don’t know anything that runs through his head these days. Drake was always the most transparent. Even more transparent than Katie, but now… it’s the total opposite. He talks less and has lost the bit of him we had come to cherish so much. Something is bothering him,” the king explained, staring hard at the prince sleeping in the bed.

The white sheets were already started to get stained with the black liquid oozing out of the bite mark on his shoulder. The queen made a gesture to one of the guards and a nurse was called to change his bandages.

While this happened, no one said a word. Honour, however, was getting deeper into her own mind. The version of Drake the king mentioned, was one she had not yet met. Drake was still the same to her. Sweet, helpful and always looking for an excuse to hang out with her. That was the person she had come to know in the past few years she had gotten to know him.

“When did he start acting like that?” she asked.

The king rubbed his temples. Something about the tone Honour used made him answer more and more of her questions and without any resistance from his wolf, “Is there…” his question got caught in his throat.

He wondered what a girl like her could do with this information for a bit and had even tried to ask her but in the next moment, his lips said something completely different, “I’m not sure when he changed exactly. He changed slowly over time and before we knew it… he wasn’t the same person anymore.”

Those in the room perceptive enough noticed the odd reaction from the king but remained silent. Honour’s mood was absolute. She wasn’t going to be explaining anything to them.

Unlike her somewhat cold exterior, she hadn’t blocked herself from the mind link and for those that bothered to check, they all knew that the girl was hurting inside.

The number of things she could do were limitless… and yet limited at the same time. It was at moments like this that she remembered the one time she had tried to summon the powers of the moon goddess.

............….

That cold night like all other nights that week, Honour had been tired of everything that was happening around her. It was only days after Sandra’s birthday.

A party that she had not attended in person but she had felt it when Katie’s body was transported from the moon palace to earth. The feeling of that divine energy was all too familiar to her.

However, somewhere deep inside her, she knew this was something temporary and when the time had come, Katie had been transported back, albeit hastily. Lina grew more determined to grow strong… and so did Bree and Crysta. The kingdom was healing, but there was something else happening in the world.

The girl often walked through the woods listening to the rustling woods and the messages carried by the wind… and when Prince Drake was free, he came along with her and they talked about everything and nothing together. She was happy in his presence… and at peace.

The glimpses of her past life at the moment were just that… glimpses. She didn’t know anything about herself when she was a goddess but she had so many emotions that didn’t feel right.

Once, she had gotten a glimpse of a memory. A memory of a goddess dressed in tattered armour with her hands covered in blood.

The blood did not seem to be her own. After all, it didn’t make sense for a goddess to have red blood. This also came as an instinct to the girl. She simply knew the gods didn’t bleed the same stuff as mortals.

During one of her late evening walks with the prince, she heard something whistling in the wind. It was urgent… so urgent that she could have done anything to put an end to it. It was the day she came to learn what had driven Katie to such great lengths to stop the Rogue King escaped…

It was the Day the Wind whispered… About the Rogue King’s Imprisonment… And Just how much Power he Wielded…