Desreal: VORAER; Ever heard of Oscar the Grouch?

“You would give up your sacred rights for a brat you barely know?"

"Yes, I would."

"You would give up your throne for him? He who has caused you such misery, such humiliation?"

"Yes, I would."

Nicodemus was something to fear. That much Skylar did know. He had never told her much of his past, and yet enough to tell her that he had once been one of the finest General’s this world had ever seen. When he said something, he meant it. Skylar wished she could be more like him. Maybe then she’d be able to look at him and not hide in embarrassment. She remembers when he had defended her with his life once, when they had Hawthorne and everything was as it should have been. There was a mountain lion in the highest reaches of Andarin where Skylar had roamed, so young and carefree. It seemed as if on cue and out of nowhere he came, flames shrouding him like he were the devil himself. She knew that he was always watching over her, and perhaps it was even now that his fatherly eyes would find Voraer’s from some unseen hidden place….

It was why she was never truly afraid to be alone.

“I approach whoever looks like they need….company.” She smiles shyly. “I thought maybe you’d like to talk….” Her voice trails. She wasn’t dense either. Youth and dense were two completely different things. The girl found a silence for a while, and while the silence lingered, she was summoning her white roses around him, air cautiously swirling ice around them, though his heat radiated and melted the ice quite quickly.

And then hell broke loose.

He stepped forwards, crushing two of her white roses and charring them. The girl recoiled quickly, her face horrified, slinking about as low as a puppy cringing from it’s master. She let out a soft whimper in fear. What had happened between him and her father was a mystery, but she knew it couldn’t be as he said. She knew that as much of a hot-head as he was, he would never simply barge in and summon Iriase on just anyone. It was that alone that made her fear him. She shakes her head in confusion. “I…I….” She was still cringing when he left. “Wait!” She summons Lorelei to her, stepping upon her cloud and urging it forwards to him. “What happened? Maybe I can help. I‘m not like whoever else has hurt you here.”

APPRENTICE

**SKYLAR**

"You have spilled your own blood rather than the blood of an innocent. That was the final task and the most important."

Picture Copyright to Romance 2009