Falling petals

Found.

"We should rest for now."
Ray saw that Adaline was slowing down, the usual energy that she had depleting with each step she took.

'Looks like what happened all day must have tired her down. Best to stop so she can take in the situation with pace. However, the other one....'

Ray glanced to the other child beside Adaline. The girl took air through the nostrils and exhaled through the mouth, her eyes closed as if meditating and calming her nerves. She did this a few times and when she felt she has done enough she opened her eyes and kept a steady gaze when she looked around with a sense of alertness.

'Her highness Sakura... she is frighteningly calm for a child who was thrusted into such a situation. Her gaze is steady and alert, she is taking a keen attention to the surrounding, just like a trained guard would. She didn't once cry or showed her fear. Not even the pain of being burned slow made her cry out. I have never met a child like her.'

Ray found the princess to be bizarre existence. This was a side he never saw from her. He was a guard of the Envoy manor for already 6 years, and has seen the princess for the last four years of those six. He used to even be assigned a few times to protect the children when they played together. She gave off the usual sheltered and naive child appearance all those times.

'It appears that the her highness was more that what meets the eyes. A child this young and so poised when thrown in such a situation can't have been raised normally. I used to hear that his majesty loved his daughter with all his heart. That he would glare at anyone who tries to lay a hand on her as a pretext of teaching her or disciplining her. Maybe all those were fabricated and in truth he was training her to be stronger and colder than he or his father ever was.'

The more Ray thought, the more a misunderstanding started to form in his mind. He has heard that all rumors that in other kingdoms or empires the rulers are trained to become the perfect next ruler, even going as far as inner battles for the throne between siblings. Death is never a surprise in those type of royal families.

Ray thought his empire was an exception since each ruler only had one wife or husband and held a harmonic family life, albeit a bit cold, there was never internal trifles.

"We should head out now. Staying here too long with no cover can make us easier to spot. They should still be walking around looking for us."

Sakura didn't hold her words and didn't care at the moment to keep her facade of a naive child. Right now she knew that they're in a precarious situation.

'The only cover we have is the night and the trees but even the amount of bushes already decreased and the closer we get to the manor the less trees are appearing. We are still 20 minutes away.'

Sakura looked back to the woods they walked through and knew just 30 minutes ago they passed the area of the ambush. She heard sounds of battle and felt frustrated when she thought she can't to anything to help.

'Dammit!! They are still fighting, right now the only help I can give them is quickening our pace to the manor and sending backup to them when we tell them of the attack.'

That was why Sakura tried to go pass the woods quickly and arrive at the manor with no time to waste. She looked at Ray and was just frustrated even more.

'If he didn't have to protect us then he would have already arrived to the manor by now and gotten help. But because we are just two weak brats and a driver who hasn't been trained to use attack magic, we become a bag of burdens.'

Sakura felt aggravated by the situation and then felt just a pile of anger filling her up. Unknowns to her, hidden by the night, no one noticed her iris held a swirl of darkness and that their surrounding was growing darker and quiet when the animals noticed the atmosphere.