Page 58 of Keldori By Daybreak

“But I wasn’t in any real danger as far as you knew. Ferrin can’t permanently kill a Nightmare, and you didn’t know about the rotsbane. So why did you come up?”

Orla ripped her eyes away from the mountain to look at me.

“I know he’s done some bad things.” Orla grabbed my arm when I snorted and forced me to look back at her. “He killed my mother, Wren. I promise I know what he’s done.”

“You came back up the stairs to make sure we didn’t kill him. You came back for Ferrin, not for me.”

“Look, I get that it was a mistake, but at least no one died!”

“But they did, Orla! Two strangers from my world were ripped from their bodies and turned into monsters! And Ferrin is the one who did that!”

“No, he didn’t.” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t.”

“Where do you think the rotsbane came from? He summoned them as Nightmares just so he could turn them into monsters. The next time Ciarán has him on the end of a weapon, he dies.”

Orla released me. “You sound like Galahad.”

“No one sounds like Galahad because Galahad doesn’t make sound anymore because Ferrin killed him.”

“I know, Wren!” Orla pulled at her short hair. “I know! I know that Ferrin is a monster, and now he has my brother working with him, except he’s actually my half-brother, and my mom is dead, and my real dad is dead, and I don’t have a home anymore!” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve lost everything. I promise I know Ferrin is evil and that he deserves to die, but when I saw him on the ground beneath Ciarán’s knife, I only saw the uncle who had loved me. I know it was wrong, but in that moment, I couldn’t lose him too.”

I kept my eyes on Jonquil where she watched from over Fana’s shoulder but reached for Orla’s hand.

She took mine in hers, and when I squeezed her fingers, she squeezed back.

We were on a quest to save my grandma and to restore my life to the way it had been before I’d been dragged to Skalterra. Everything I had lost, I stood to gain back. Gams, Liam, and while Von Leer might be a wash thanks to Ferrin, there were other schools with volcanology tracks I could look into after a gap year.

Orla, meanwhile, had nothing left.

“I’m still mad at you,” I clarified.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me,” I sighed. “But you should talk to Ciarán. He almost died because of you.”

“It’s weird, trusting him.” Orla wrinkled her nose, but her shoulders relaxed, and I knew she must be relieved to be moving on from the topic of her uncle.

"I trust him more than I trust Iseult.”

Orla’s cheeks flushed. “Iseult is wonderful if you give her the chance. Besides, unlike Ciarán, she’s never tried to kill us.”

“Ciarán wasn’t trying to kill us, he just wanted to save Fana.”

“By killing us.”

“The only one he ever killed was me,” I pointed out. “And he only did that because he knew I wouldn’t die permanently. Plus he saved me on the ice when I almost turned into a rotsbane.”

“Fine. But Iseult is better looking than Ciarán.” Orla stifled a laugh when I wrinkled my nose.

Disagreements about which of our travel companions was the best looking were preferable to disagreements about whether or not we should kill Orla’s uncle, so I forced myself to smile back as I let go of her hand.

I wasn’t used to seeing Skalterra in the daylight, and as we hurried over heather and moss along the lakeside, I wondered if it always looked so muted or if that was just the subalpine landscape. After staring at two moons in the sky every night for the last several months, it seemed odd there would only be one sun. It peaked out at us in intervals, passing between clouds.

Orla kept twisting around to watch the mountain. There were enough large stones jutting from the ground to make it difficult to track us from afar, but the looming mountain behind us presented a constant threat.

Still, by the time the sun was sinking over the lake, there had been no sign of Ferrin’s soldiers following us.

“Wait!” Orla finally called out. She hurried ahead of me to hoist herself onto a boulder and better survey the surrounding area. “It’s that way.”