To Talk to Mia

After I left the inn, I wandered the village and checked the few places I could think that Oliver might be, but there was no sign of him anywhere. I needed someone to talk to and Mia was the only person other than Oliver that I could think of. She already suspected Amelia and Kase, and she had shown genuine concern for how I would feel if I found out.

I made my way to her house and was told that she and Emma weren’t home, they left with Oliver earlier in the day and hadn’t returned.

I feared what I might find but I made my way to Mia’s family stable. The last time I had been here I found Emma and Fabe, and after the betrayal I encountered in the mine I couldn’t keep myself from fearing that I’d find a similar scene with Mia tonight, but there was nobody at the stable.

I continued wandering the village, I stopped by Alice’s and asked if she had seen any of them. I ran into Jax and asked him. Nobody I asked had seen Emma, Oliver, or Mia most of the day. For that matter, none of them seemed to have seen Fabe or Cal either.

I returned to the inn and found them all around a table at the back. Mia, Emma, and Oliver seemed down, but Fabe and Cal were as boisterous as ever. I sighed and left the inn. I didn’t feel like putting up with Fabe and Cal tonight, so instead I returned home.

I went to Amelia’s house first and there wasn’t an answer, so I went home. My mother was already in bed sleeping. She had been going to bed earlier since she started training with Kase.

I changed my clothes and went outside to wait for Amelia to return. She wanted to see me tonight. Maybe she would tell me what was going on with her. I waited until the moon was high in the sky and the nightly noises calmed into silence and then I went inside. Amelia nor her family were returning tonight.

I laid down in bed and slept. I tossed and turned through the night, I woke up at one point thinking I heard Amelia screaming but when I looked out the window I saw no activity, just an echo from my nightmares.

The next morning, the first thing I did was go over to Amelia’s and knocked on her door. Her mother answered and told me that Amelia had already left to go to her training with Jax’s group. I thanked her and made my way into the village.

My goal was to get to the inn and see Oliver, but before I could get through the doors I was grabbed from behind and someone’s breasts were firmly pressed against my eyes which were covered.

“Guess who?” Mia whispered in my ear.

“Mia?”

“Do you know by my boob size?”

“And your voice.” I countered.

She giggled and let me go and pulled me off to the side of the road to talk.

“How was the mine?” she asked.

“Horrible,” I admitted. “You were right about Amelia and Kase. I ended up getting separated from them and when I found them again they were having sex.”

“Oh my goddess.” she whispered. “In the mine? While you were there?! That bitch! I’m going to…”

“No… If that is what she wants than it's fine.”

“Whatever, her loss,” Mia said and held my arm tight. “Kase’s a jerk anyway. He’s been flirting with all of the girls in town.”

“Has he?”

“Yeah, he tried with me, but I want you so I shut him down.”

Mia sighed and looked distant for a moment.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “I’ll talk to you about it later. Anyway, you should warn your mom about Kase.”

“Why’s that?”

“I saw him with her on the way out of the village for training. He’s working his charm on her too.”

“My mom can take care of herself.”

Mia looked distant again and sighed.

“Yeah, but that family…”

“Do you know something?”

She shrugged.

“There was a bottle with the stuff in the cave,” she said. “If they own stuff like that, then you should definitely watch out for them.”

“What about this bottle? What was it?”

Mia looked uncomfortable and then held my hand.

“I smelled it and after I did is when I was overcome with the desire to make you mine. It was a small sniff, but the more I think about it… I wouldn’t have had the courage to be so direct without it.”

“Do you think that Kase might be using this stuff on Amelia?”

Mia shook her head.

“Maybe, but I doubt it. At least in the mine I don’t think he would’ve used it, the bottle didn’t look that secure, carrying it into an adventure would be dangerous. If the bottle broke anyone who was exposed would’ve lost control of themselves.”

Mia was looking down at our hands and sighed.

“You know a lot for a simple smell,” I said.

“If a small smell of it did that to me, I can only imagine what would happen if exposed to it more directly.”

She stood up and pulled me toward the forest.

“C’mon, lets go train. I don’t want to talk about this anymore and Amelia’s potions have finally got my arm feeling better.”

I nodded and followed along with her. Fighting the monsters in the forest seemed easier with her around than with Oliver and Amelia. Was it because she had been training with Jax? After each battle she continued to help me with tips to improve but not as much as she had needed before.

“You’ve gotten a lot better really quick,” she said.

“I’ve had a good teacher!”

She blushed and kissed me, and we went back to practicing on monsters. Once the sun was setting we returned to the village and entered the village at the same time as Jax’s party was returning. Amelia saw us and marched over but was grabbed by Emma who whispered something in her ear before leaving with Fabe and Cal.

Amelia watched them leave and then walked more slowly toward us, lost in a thought. When she reached us she looked immediately to Mia.

“I heard you decided to wait to leave,” she spoke without her usual fire toward Mia.

“Yeah, I’m going to have Darxie all to myself without you there to get in the way.”

“I don’t mind,” she said. “I know that Darx wouldn’t be so easily swayed by you.”

I tried not to laugh. Maybe if I didn’t already know how easily Amelia had been swayed away from me.

“You’re so confident,” Mia laughed. “It’ll make you cry when you’re wrong.”

Amelia looked at the way Mia held me and then took a deep breath. She almost looked panicked. She couldn’t know what Mia and I had already done, but she could now guess we weren’t as distant as we had been a few days earlier.

“Darx, I’m sorry about last night. What I needed to see from Alice was…”

“I went to Alice’s last night looking for Oliver, she hadn’t seen you all night,” Darx said.

Amelia’s eyes went wide and she froze. Mia tensed against my arm.

“You were looking for Oliver last night?” Mia asked.

“Yeah, I needed to talk to him about some stuff. That stuff we talked about this morning.”

“Oh,” Mia said. “That… You d-didn’t find him, did you?”

I shook my head, why was she so worried about whether I found Oliver. Come to think of it, when I did find him he was with Mia. My fears from the night before crept back in, was there something that Mia was hiding from me? I looked back at Amelia, she was starting to tear up.

“When I found him he was at the inn with everyone, but I didn’t want to drag him away from having fun so I went home. I watched the stars until pretty late.”

“The inn? Oh, you came in? I didn’t see you! You should’ve bugged us, I would’ve watched the stars with you and you could’ve talked to Oliver and I about it at the same time!”

I laughed. “Yeah, I should’ve.”

“So Amelia, if you weren’t at Alice’s last night, where were you?” Mia asked.

“I-I, uh… Its embarrassing. I’ve been training on my own at nights with my mana control. So I went home after the mine and practiced there.”

“I stopped by to see if you beat me home and you didn’t answer,” Darx said.

“I must’ve fallen asleep,” she laughed.

She was struggling to make a lie that made sense. I already knew that she had doubled back to Kase and I knew how late she had stayed out. My heart ached thinking about what they were doing and how she still tried to cling to me despite what she was doing.

“Do you want to meet later?” she asked. “I can leave you two to talk like you were supposed to last night.”

I couldn’t decide. I didn’t really want to hear any more lies from Amelia, but I also didn’t want this to keep going. I should tell her I know what she is up to and end the games, but I didn’t think I was ready to do it quite yet. Going with Mia didn’t sit well with me either. She had been acting weird all day and mention of me looking for Oliver made her tense up. I didn’t know her as well as Amelia, so I didn’t know if she was afraid and trying to hide something from me.

But I knew Amelia and she was still able to convince me that she wasn’t hiding anything from me…