"Are you sure you can't stay, dear?" Jodie asked, tears brimming her eyes. 

Jay, Heath, Ike, and Zia were just outside the door and she had come to see them off.

Jay sighed. "I am so sorry, Mother, but I'm afraid we can't. The fate of the kingdom rests on us getting to the King with some very urgent information."

Jodie nodded, looking choked up as she turned away so Jay couldn't see her wipe away a tear. But Zia could see it, and her heart nearly broke. She couldn't imagine how hard it must be, only having Jay for years, and then thinking she had three extra family members, and now they had to go.

"We'll come and visit," Zia promised. "Very soon."

Jodie smiled at her. "Thank you, dear. I look forward to it." She wrapped Zia in a hug which Zia gladly returned. 

"Goodbye," Zia whispered, surprised to find her voice hoarse.

Jodie gave her one more tight squeeze before releasing her. She then proceeded to give Ike and Heath each a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, which looked rather funny because she was so short and had to pull them nearly to their knees to reach them.

"Be safe," the old woman called from the door, waving as Ike, Jay, Heath, and Zia headed southeast, starting their journey to the capital.

"Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Ike teased Heath as they walked.

"It was... strange," he replied. "It was odd to call someone else 'grandmother'."

Ike smiled. "What about you, Zia? Was it really that bad being Jay's wife?"

Zia felt her face turn red. "I wasn't actually his wife. We were just pretending."

"That bad?" Ike said, eyebrow raised.

Zia couldn't think of a good comeback, so she rolled her eyes. "You're hopeless."

"I thought you said there was no such thing as hopelessness?" Jay reminded her.

He had her there. She tried to think of a reply, but couldn't, so she changed the subject. 

"How far is it to the capital again?" she asked.

"About two-and-a-half days on foot. If we had horses we could cut that time in half, but..." Jay left the sentence hanging in the air.

"So if we hurry, we should be able to get to the King before the Skilaen army gets through the Pass," Heath calculated.

Jay nodded. "But we may have a problem."

Zia wanted to groan. Of course things couldn't go smoothly!

"And that would be?" Ike prodded. 

"I'm not sure if I know exactly how to get back," Jay mumbled, looking at the ground.

"WHAT?" Zia wasn't sure who was louder, Ike, Heath, or her.

"I mean, I know the general direction, but I don't know the exact location," he said hurriedly.

"I thought you said you've been in this area a lot?" Zia said accusingly. 

"And I have," Jay said in a soft voice, like he was trying to calm a raging animal. "But I've always had a map with me just in case, and I've had to rely on it from time to time. It's easy to get lost in this area." He swept his arm around, gesturing to the thick grove of pine trees around them.

"Still, you could have given us a little more warning!" Heath said angrily.

Jay had the good sense to look sheepish. "I know, and I'm sorry. But even if I had told you, it wouldn't change anything."

"If you had told us, maybe we could have come up with an alternative plan!" Heath shouted.

"Like what?"

Zia couldn't make out what either of them were saying after that because they both started shouting things at each other.

Things were getting heated quickly, but before Zia could make a move to stop it, Ike stepped between them and placed a hand on each of their shoulders, and suddenly the yelling and shouting was replaced by cries of pain and surprise. Heath and Jay started to sink to the ground, both saying, "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!"

Only when Heath and Jay were on their knees did Ike release his grip. "What?" he asked when he saw Zia's look of mixed awe and confusion. "Pressure point in the shoulder. If you squeeze it just right, it causes a lot of pain."

"I hadn't noticed," Heath grumbled, rubbing his shoulder as he stood.

Jay rose too, also rubbing his shoulder. "Was that really necessary?" he asked Ike as he glared at him.

Ike shrugged. "Maybe not, but it was fun." He gave them his trademark crooked smirk.

Both men glared at him and Ike smiled back, completely ignoring their furious faces.

"Anyway, back to the matter at hand. We know the general direction of the capitol, yes?" He looked to Jay for an answer, and when he nodded, Ike continued. "Then what's the problem? Compared to what we've been through in the last couple of days, getting a bit lost is a minor thing."

"He's right," Zia agreed.

Ike's eyes widened. "You're agreeing with me? Can someone write that down? We need to record this momentous occasion."

Zia rolled her eyes. "We're wasting time sitting here arguing. We'll head in the general direction of the capital and if we happen to run by any villages, we'll stop and ask for directions."

"Ask for directions?" Ike asked, brow raised. When he saw that she was serious, he started to laugh. "Ask for directions?" he repeated. "No, no, I don't think we should do that."

"What is it with men refusing to ask for directions?" Zia asked, placing her hands on her hips.

"What is it with women always pressing men to ask for directions?" Ike countered.

"That's only because men refuse to ask for directions!"

"I agree with Ike," Heath said, stepping between the two of them like he was worried a fist fight would break out. "Now, let me explain," he added quickly when he saw Zia's face. "Look at the state of us. We're tired, hungry, we haven't bathed in a while, and normal citizens don't wear armor-" he gestured to their armor, the classic leather for the Thieves and gleaming metal for the Captain- "so, quite frankly, we're going to stick out. I think, given the fact that we have an angry army on our tails, we should try to keep our heads down until we can get to the capital. You never know if Daxtor will send ahead scouts or spies to try to find our whereabouts, and if we stick out in a small village, we might as well just run back into those cages."

Zia hadn't thought that. After considering his words, she had to- reluctantly- concede that Heath had a point.

For some reason unknown to her, Zia studied Heath. She had seen him thousands upon thousands of times, but she found herself staring at him, not studying his outward appearance, but something much deeper than that. Had he always been able to settle arguments like that with reason and justification? But more than just that, had he always been able to make both parties feel like their voice was being heard? She thought back to the very beginning of her journey through the Westfell Pass, back when their company had been cold and mistrusting of one another. Heath had insisted that they all gather around and introduce themselves, using a ridiculous voice to break through the tension of being so personal with complete strangers. She admired- for what felt like the hundredth time- how simple, how much of a second nature it appeared to him. Had he always been such a talented diplomat? 

"You're doing that thing again," Heath told her, bringing her out of her thoughts.

She shook her head to clear it. "Doing what thing?"

"You know, that thing that you do." When Zia shrugged, he expanded. "You know, that creepy face that you do? It's like you're trying to pick a person apart and figure out how they work."

Zia blinked. "Do I do that?"

Ike nodded, and Zia was surprised to find Jay agreeing.

"I've seen that look many times- every time you're facing an opponent, actually," Ike told her.

"Really?"

"Uh-huh. You had that same look on your face right before you took down Abner," added Jay.

Zia's fists clenched and her face screwed up in rage at the mention of the horrid man. 

Heath laughed nervously. "Is it a bad thing that I'm glad her sword was taken? I don't really like being around her when she has that face."

Zia tried not to focus too much on what Heath had said, but she couldn't help it. Did Heath, her closest and dearest friend, actually fear her? She knew she was a respectable fighter, and that she was a force to be reckoned with, but did she actually frighten him? The thought made her stomach lurch, for it was too close a comparison with Daxtor, and she had vowed long ago that she would never be like him- that she would never use her skills as a fighter to inflict fear into others just for the sake of power; that she would never hurt someone purposely unless they deserved it.

Shaking the thought out of her head, she tried to keep her face neutral as she told Jay to lead the way and fell into a steady pace next to Heath, Ike just slightly ahead of them with Jay in the lead.

"I was joking Zia," Heath told her after a few moments of walking in silence. "So you can get rid of that worry crease on your forehead."

"I wasn't worried," Zia told him, even though it was a complete lie. "I was just... concerned, but that's not the same thing."

Heath chuckled. "Care to tell me why you were, as you put it, 'concerned'?"

"Not really."

"You can trust me, you know," he said softly.

"I know, but it's not something you need to concern yourself with."

"Then you don't need to either."

"Yes, I do," she said. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"Then help me understand. What's wrong?"

Heath stopped walking and Zia stopped with him. His eyes held a plea and his brows were raised as if to say, Well? I'm waiting?

Reluctantly, Zia told him about her fear of being like Daxtor, of striking fear into those she held close. When she had finished, Heath was silent for a while as they walked. Zia stared straight ahead, not really wanting to know what his reaction would be. He'll probably laugh at me, tell me I'm being paranoid, and then change the subject, she thought. So she was surprised when she felt Heath's eyes on her and he said, "I really was joking, Zia. Honest. I always love having you around. And if it helps, you're nothing like Daxtor. Nothing."

Zia finally looked at him to find him looking so intently at her it made her stop in her tracks. She had never seen his green eyes hold so much intensity and pure honesty, and when she looked at him she couldn't help but believe him. She nodded her head and when Heath smiled she felt her heart flutter like a bird in her chest. She looked down at the ground in front of her as she continued to walk. She said, "Thank you, Heath."

"For what?"

"Being a good friend."

He smiled widely. "I am a good friend, aren't I? I should get an award or something."

Zia snorted and rolled her eyes. 

They took shelter that night in a small lean-to strung up against two thick pine trees. They only had a few blankets that Borton had sent with them, but the fallen pine needles from the trees made the ground soft, and Zia quickly fell asleep. She instantly wished she hadn't.

Zia was four, cowering in the corner of her old, molding house as Daxtor neared her slowly and shakily, too drunk to walk straight. He had a tankard of mead in his hand that smelled like dirty feet, and he sneered at her, showing his even dirtier teeth.

"Do it!" he snarled. "Give it to me! Do it!"

Zia tried to cry that she didn't know what he was talking about, but her voice caught in her throat and all she managed was to squeak like a mouse.

Daxtor growled and hurled his tankard at her. It bounced off her arm and clattered onto the floor, splattering her with the mead Daxtor hadn't yet drunk.

"Do it you worthless twerp! I didn't waste this much of my life just to have you not do it!"

Zia cowered deeper into the corner, wishing she could disappear. 

This is just a dream, her present self thought in her deep sleep. I'm just dreaming.

Zia shot awake, covered in a cold sweat. Her body shook, and it wasn't from the cold, bone-chilling wind. A shudder ran through her body so powerful it made her teeth chatter. It was just a dream, she told herself. Only a dream.

But she was wrong. It wasn't a dream. It was a memory. One of her earliest memories- one of the first times Daxtor had come home drunk and beaten her. She hadn't understood back then what it was Daxtor had wanted her to do.

But now she did. Now she understood. And she promised herself, then and there, that if she did have any hidden power, she would use it against Daxtor and destroy him.

"Are you feeling alright, Zia?" Heath asked her the next morning. "You don't look very well."

"I'm fine," Zia said, brushing off his concern.

Zia had found it impossible to find sleep after she had awakened from her nightmare the night before, so she spent the night plotting and planning how she would confront Daxtor when she met him next, and some sixth sense told her that she wouldn't have to wait long. She had plotted all the different ways she would make him pay for what he had done to her, from repaying him for each and every one of her beatings tenfold to finishing his too-long delayed execution.

"Are you sure? You look a little pale," he pressed.

"I'm fine," she repeated, a little more harshly than she meant to.

"Let's get a move on," Jay told them as he gathered the last of their supplies in the bag William Borton had given them and threw it over his shoulder. "The sun won't stay up forever."

Zia rubbed her chilly arms as they resumed their journey through the woods. The trees were mostly pine, but a few bare aspen trees could be seen here and there. A small layer of snow blanketed over the ground, but it wasn't enough to slow them down. It was only a few inches at least.

Zia tried to imagine how beautiful the missing leaves of the aspens would have been during the fall surrounded by the green pines. Zia could see in her mind's eye the bird's view, with small patches of brilliant reds and soft oranges in the dark green. The image relaxed her, and she felt a bit of her anger melt away. Just a bit.

The day went by uneventfully. The men made idle chit chat while Zia kept to herself with her thoughts. Many times they tried to engage Zia in a conversation, but she quickly found ways to escape them by giving short, one-worded replies. She didn't feel like talking. She had to hold on to her anger, to fuel it, because if her anger dwindled, she might not be able to act the next time she saw Daxtor. She knew that if she didn't have her anger to hold on to when that time came, she would find herself feeling like that little girl again, scared, shaking in the corner, trying to disappear. She knew she would freeze and stand by as Daxtor killed innocent people, probably not even giving them a second thought. So she fueled the anger, the hatred, and the lusting desire for revenge until it created a heat in her chest so intense she was surprised it didn't spring forth out of her and engulf the forest in a fiery inferno. The thought made Zia glad that her emotions had no such abilities. Her life was already so complicated, such power would be most unwanted.

"You're making that face again," Heath told her.

"Which one?" she couldn't help but ask.

"The one that makes me worry about your mental state."

"You're going to have to be more specific," Ike called over his shoulder

Zia tried, but she couldn't completely keep the smile off her face. It was nice to see Ike back to his old self. Well, almost his old self. Zia could still see the dark, haunted shadows in his eyes even when he smiled. She wondered if it would ever really go away.

Heath smiled as he walked beside her. But then the smile faded. "Are you sure you are alright?" he whispered.

Zia didn't answer. She didn't have an answer. Things were all so topsy turvy right now she wasn't sure of anything.

Heath seemed to read her mind. "Everything will turn out right, you know."

"How can you be so sure?"

Heath smiled and his eyes glazed over, as if he were daydreaming. "When I was a boy-"

"Oh, here we go," Zia muttered with a teasing eye roll.

Heath glared at her. "Do you wan to hear this story or not?"

"Not," she decided.

He rolled his eyes and started telling the story anyway. "A long time ago, a few years before my parents died, I went to visit my friend who lived just over a large hill by my house. I had planned to show my friend how long I could stand on my hands with my feet in the air, but when I arrived, my friend pulled me inside his house and told me that his father had gone to a trial at the King's castle and that his father would be bringing home a little girl about our age. My friend asked me to help him welcome the girl into his home with a surprise."

"Let me guess," Zia said with a small smile. "They jumped out from behind the sofa and shouted 'Welcome home!' nearly scaring the poor girl out of her wits?" Zia flashed back to the moment. She had, indeed, almost jumped out of her skin. Looking back, it seemed so long ago, and it made her yearn for simpler times, when her only responsibilities were her training and not getting lost in the vast forest that was the Thieves' Headquarters.

Heath huffed. "Who's the one telling this story?"

"Sorry," she said, not able to keep the smile off her face.

"No you're not," Heath said happily. "Anyway, my friend wanted to bake the girl a loaf of bread. Unfortunately, my friend didn't know the first thing about baking, so after nearly setting the house aflame a few times, I decided to stop watching from the corner and give my friend a hand."

Zia chuckled, imagining Ike in his old house, frantically trying to smother a fiery loaf of bread with a rag while Heath laughed his head off in the corner as he watched his friend struggle.

"That is not what happened!" Ike protested, calling back to them. Zia hadn't noticed he had been listening. "You're the one who set the loaf on fire!"

"Details, details." Heath looked at Zia like, Can you believe him?

"Back to the story. As it happens, I wasn't too great at baking myself, so we decided to settle on just jumping out at her when she least expected it." Heath smiled widely, like his six-year-old self had been a genius.

"When the girl finally came home with my friend's father," he continued, "we jumped out from behind the sofa and I could have sworn that girl jumped so high her head touched the ceiling."

"I didn't jump that high," Zia protested.

Heath sighed. "Fine, do you want to tell the story? No? Good. Now shut up and let me finish."

Zia felt a giggle escape her lips.

"I left shortly after that; the little girl was very shy and didn't seem up to visitors. When I returned the next day, my friend, his father, and the little girl were all gone. They had vanished without a trace. I looked all around the house for them, but found no sign of them. That is, until I looked in my friend's room. He had left a note for me on his bed that said that they had all moved to the woods and that he would come to visit me soon."

Zia tried to imagine what it would have been like for Heath, planning on spending the day with his best friend only to find that he had disappeared. "That must have been scary," said Zia.

"Not really. My friend paid me a visit the next day and explained the situation to me. He promised to visit me every once in a while, and he was true to his word. For four years he paid me a visit every week. Sometimes he would bring his father and the little girl with him, but the little girl always seemed so on edge, like she was expecting attack and hated being out in the open. At the end of every one of their visits, my friend and the little girl would head into the forest. I tried to follow them a couple of times to see where they went, but I always lost them before I could see.

"But it turned out that I would eventually learn where they went at the end of every encounter we had. I went to live with my friend and the little girl after my parents passed. I was so distraught. I was angry at my parents for feeding me instead of themselves. Heck, I was mad at myself for not figuring it out before."

"How did you figure it out?" Zia asked, her voice small.

"My friend's father told me that my parents had asked him to take me in when they were gone," Heath said, and Zia was surprised to find that his voice held no bitterness.

"Anyway," he continued, "I was angry and hurt, and I just wanted to throw something and fall into a pit and never climb up all at the same time. That is, until the little girl found me in the forest. I had gone on a walk because I needed some time to myself, but she'd followed me. She didn't say anything for a while; she just walked with me. I tried to lose her, but she was annoyingly persistent." Heath bumped Zia's shoulder and she smiled.

"Finally, as we made our way back to the camp where the others were, the little girl stopped me and said, 'Everything will turn out right, you know.'" Heath said the last part in a ridiculously high pitched voice, and Zia snorted.

"I do not sound like that," she told him.

Pretending not to hear her, Heath went on. "Still angry, I told the little girl, 'What do you know?' You know what she said to me?"

"What?" Zia's voice was barely a whisper.

"She said, 'I may not know much, but I do know that life has a way of making things right for people who deserve it. You just need to make sure you deserve it.'"

Zia didn't know what to say. She had no recollection of saying that to Heath. Was he making it up? No. This was Heath. He was nothing if not honest.

"And was she right?" Ike asked from in front of them.

Heath nodded.

"Did you nod? Or are you ignoring me? I can't see you," Ike reminded him.

Zia gave a small smile. "He nodded."

"Well of course she was right!" Ike said. "She's the smartest woman I know."

"And exactly how many women do you know?" Jay asked him, speaking for the first time.

"Is everyone listening to this conversation?" Zia muttered to herself.

"Six... and a half," Ike answered.

Zia thought she'd misheard him, but apparently she hadn't.

"Six and a half?" Jay asked. "How is that possible?"

"Well, Heath's such a wimp there's no mistaking him as partly female."

The look on Heath's face was priceless. His brows were furrowed and his eyes were wide. His mouth was slightly agape and overall he just looked genuinely confused.

Zia snorted as she tried to hold back her laughter, but it came tumbling out of her anyway. Zia couldn't remember when she had last laughed so hard. Her sides hurt and she had to stop walking and kneel on the ground so she could breathe what little air she could. Her laughing was silent, and every once in a while she managed to take a break between rounds of laughs and take one gulp of air so she didn't pass out from loss of oxygen.

"It's good to hear you laugh again, Zia," Heath told her. "Even if it is at my expense."

Zia tried to calm down, and finally managed to stop her stomach from cramping. "You should have seen your face!" she told Heath, still laughing.

That was the last thing Zia remembered before her laugh turned into a cry of agony as pain exploded in the back of her leg.