PeaceMaker

Desilva's feet pounded against the grassy ground, her vision blurred from the tears falling from her eyes.

'It was them, Silva who killed your father,' the words repeated themselves in her head, words of truth that she refused to believe as she ran deeper into the camp, her hideaway tent coming into view.

'THEY ROBBED ME OF MY HUSBAND AND YOU OF YOUR FATHER! AND YET YO TRY TO DEFEND THEM?!' the words her mother had yelled at her refused to leave her head, especially the hate each of the elders showed in their eyes.

But.. if that wasn't enough... if their anger-filled words targeted at the one person who brought light into all of their dark days in the village wasn't enough…if assigning someone who had pledged many times against any violence-related actions wasn't enough… if forcing someone to kill someone who they said multiple times that they wanted to be friends with to their mother wasn't enough… She looked back, expecting her mother's figure running after her. She stopped running when she realized there was no one behind her.

'If that wasn't enough…' Desilva thought to herself, clenching her fist, 'they are so certain about this that they didn't even try to hold me back.'

She roughly wiped the tears on her face and walked past her hideout tent, heading towards the stream at the bottom of the hill the camp sat on top.

She considered just rolling down the hill, but she might get knocked out by the rocks randomly placed on the hill, and if she made it past them, the trip down would be too fast. She wanted time to think clearly after the scene with her mother earlier.

"Killing the prince…" she muttered to herself.

'Was that even possible?' she thought. The prince was someone that was heavily guarded everywhere he went and even when he slept.. Especially after what happened 2 days ago. If killing him was possible back then, it's impossible now and basically unachievable since she didn't even want to think about it, nevertheless do it.

But… Desilva remembered something her grandma said, 'Aucacia Empire, led by the powerful royals, Aurelius Aarvi and Rilvia Aarvi and now their 3 three kins, including Dominic Aarvi." What if he was their kid? What they did… who they took away from her wasn't something she could easily look over.

Her father, her uncles, her aunts, even those that weren't in her bloodline but she considered family was all taken in a war because of the Aucacia Empire. Because of one wrong move they made, most of her family and half of the village had to pay with their lives and they didn't even try to make it up to them. Just ran away and left them behind to die. Lives she could've still had beside her today… people she could have still gotten to hug or say goodby to one last time could have been there with her today, but they were gone. All because of the cowardice of a kingdom and she could never forgive or forget that.

'Yes, we would suggest the assassination of his highness, Dominic Aarvi,' Desilva replayed the words of Rossy. 'Murder?' Desilva thought to herself, looking down at her hands, 'I can't even kill a fly with these hands but they decide to make me kill a human. One that was in a war and survived, at that.' If she managed to build up the mindset to kill Dominic, it was still impossible with her strength, even if the prince was a bit handicapped.

Desilva looked up and picked up a small stone when she saw the stream ahead, then ran forward and flicked her hand in a certain motion and watched the stone skim across the surface of the water before sinking.

'So close to my record…' she thought to herself, picking up another stone and throwing it again. This time it sunk after 5 hops on the water.

She picked up another stone, this time staring at the surface and then sitting down on the soft grass beneath her feet, laying down completely on the grass. 'What even happened that day?' she asked herself. She could remember the loud screams coming from Dominic's tent that day, they varied from long to short but still held the same amount of pain in each roar.

She had immediately dropped everything she was doing and ran into his tent hoping to help. She walked into the tent and immediately took a step backward, wanting to look away from the scene. Dominic laid on the floor, shaking violently, his eyes wide open with his pupils vibrating as they stood at the top of the whites of his eye, centimeters away from rolling into the back of his eye. His chest thrust into the air and then back down to the floor violently while his legs and arms trembled, blood dripping out of his tightly clenched fists as his fingers dug into his skin.

It was horrifying to watch and Desilva could feel the remnants of sheer pain and terror she felt that day just by recalling the moment. What degree of excruciating pain could he have been going through to have ended up that badly… or even better, 'how did he hold it all in before that day?' she asked herself.

She remembered running away... Wanting to retreat to a place far away from his screams of agony where she could calm her nerves and throw up the fear clogging up her throat. Wanting to go back to the village and take comfort in the blandness of their streets, far away from the anxiety and restlessness stifling the air in Dominic's tent. But somehow, she ran back to her tent and carried some traditional medicine with her, then ran back to Dominic's tent, hesitating first when she saw the crowd of people around him, but then pushing them aside and handing a tall man with silver hair the medicine in her hand.

It wasn't until she had stayed with the silver-headed man and a group of physicians both from the camp and her village for the first 1 hour after Dominic's attack that the wild hustle and scrambling of everyone slowed down a bit that the words unrelated to medicine sank in. That was when she noticed that they referred to him as 'high highness..' She had pushed away the thoughts for a bit and helped the silver-headed man through the night but she ended up stumbling upon a conversation between the silver-headed man and some well-built woman and confirming that he was a royal prince of some sorts.