Chapter 6

"I don"t like her."

Looking over my shoulder, I searched for who Laila was referencing. "Who?"

"Don"t ‘who' me. You know who. You don"t like her either." It was still the dead of night, the only light coming from the moon behind the clouds. Laila lit her hand with bright purple flames to shine our way, keeping her voice low. "Iliantha swears by her. Says she"s really smart and one hell of a fighter. She must be, or she wouldn"t have climbed the ranks to Colonel. But I don"t like the way she talks to you. I don"t like the way she talks to her soldiers, either."

Although I couldn"t consider myself a fan of Amara, I didn't have much to go on. Afterall, we'd only just met. I also wasn"t sure if Laila wanted to talk or vent. She was good at the venting thing. We were both pretty talkative, but Laila"s first name could"ve been chatty, middle name Kathy.

"What?" Laila glanced my way. "You don"t agree?"

"I don"t know enough about her to agree or disagree." Carefully, I watched the ground below me. There was a thin layer of clover in patches, but mostly black pebbles and dead foliage lined the path. I was good enough at making a fool of myself without a rock or branch to stumble over. "Why did you put her with Jake?"

"Because he"s a pain in the ass, too." She lifted her lantern of a hand from left to right, squinting both directions. "No offense."

"None taken," I said, following her gaze. "What are you looking for?"

"Deer trail? Walking paths? Anything that"ll take us to a clearing where we can set up camp."

"We can"t set up where we landed?"

"We made too much noise. We want to stay as covert as possible. At least through the night. Iliantha"s going to have the dragons fly out once we find a place to set up." Still, she squinted left and right, continuing through the rough shrubbery.

This land was odd. At the capital, there wasn"t a whole lot of foliage like I was used to back home, but there was enough that it looked normal. What I would consider normal, anyway.

I couldn"t make out much here, given the darkness. All I saw were rocks and branches. My ravens flew above us, just above the trees, and they were the only thing familiar about our surroundings. Every few feet, a pine tree or two stood tall, framed by a few dying bushes. Plenty of space for us to set up camp, but I supposed we were still pretty close to where we had landed.

"It"s colder here. Right now, we're in the summer, and it still won"t get warmer than fifty degrees. That"s why it looks like this," Laila said. "But I put Amara with your brother because I"m hoping she"ll humble him. And vice versa. They've both got the maturity of a fifteen-year-old. That girl looks at you like you"re the kid because you"ve got some spunk in you. She thinks to be strong, you have to be bitter. The kind of person who only respects people who have suffered as greatly as she has. And I don"t fuck with that."

It wasn't that I disagreed. Who was I to question her? She had eons more life experience than I did.

"It's alright," Laila said, turning to look at me. "You can question me."

God damn, I hated Fae. "I wasn't actually questioning you. Just kind of?—"

"Say it, Rain."

A deep sigh. "I'm not her biggest fan either, but I don't want you to play favorites."

She arched a brow at me. "Elaborate?"

"She was kind of rude to me," I said. "And me and you are friends. So you're kind of biased. And I guess I would just feel really bad if you—someone who obviously matters a whole hell of a lot to her, probably her literal God—decided you didn't like her because she was kind of rude to me."

"Maybe you need humbling too." Laila shot me a smile, then gestured to the right. Between more pine trees, there was a small trail, one carved out by animals frolicking freely through the countryside. I followed Laila's steps onto it. "Do I dislike how she talked to you? Obviously. I already said that."

"I'm waiting for the but."

"But I didn't like her before you two met." She ducked beneath the tree, and its branch came back and smacked me in the face. "I don't like her because of the philosophy she seems to live by."

Now that Laila's light was blocked by the foliage, and stars still lined my sight from that branch's smack, seeing the path below me was damn near impossible. So I followed her guidance and brought a flame of my own to my fingertips. "That happy equals stupid?"

"Partly. It sort of mocks feminism, doesn't it? Like the critique of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl isn't problematic because she's a woman who's happy and excited about life. It's problematic because her existence is purely there to further a male character's arc."

Wasn't sure if I'd ever seen a Manic Pixie Dream Girl on TV, let alone a criticism of it. "I'll take your word for it."

"And if that was all it was, we could get a few drinks and argue about it. But it's her whole outlook on life. That one person's suffering is worse than another's because of the things they've endured. Suffering doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's a spectrum."

"I'm not following you." Literally, I was. Right into a massive puddle. Splashing ice cold water all the way up my knee, I cursed under my breath. "But I'm listening."

"That's because you haven't been in her head." She waved a dismissive hand at me. "Amara doesn't like you because, in her mind, you haven't suffered enough. Graham has. That's why she respects him. That's why she trusts him to fight beside her. But she thinks you're weak. She thinks the same about Warren and Ezra. She thinks that she has suffered so much, you can't begin to understand her pain. The pain of these people."

"Well, I haven't."

Spinning to face me, still holding her flame, she wagged a finger. "That's where you're wrong."

As much as I wanted to appreciate her validation of my experience, I had to laugh. I only had the vaguest idea of what Graham had gone through, and I knew it was worse than what I had. "These people are living in a war zone. That's not even close to what I went through."

"Your mother lived with severe schizophrenia your entire life." Ever so slightly, Laila's eyes glowed. "She killed herself before you were even out of high school. Your grandmother died shortly after you finished. From the moment you were born, you lived in poverty. Poverty here might look different than it does on our world, but you can't deny that there are advantages here too. When you didn't have food, you had to steal it. You had to risk punishment, or imprisonment, just to eat.

"You grew up in a patriarchal hellscape where you were looked down upon purely for your sex. Warren and Ezra have been beaten within an inch of their lives because they grew up in a world that didn't accept their sexualities. Here, sexuality has never been demonized.

"These people have suffered tremendously. They have lost family to enemies and war time and time again. But there's always been someone in their village who would give them food if they were hungry. They have always had equal rights between sexes. They have never been subjugated by religion. Your ancestors were burned for witchcraft–– the same thing that's treated with the utmost respect on this world."

"Right. We've both lived through shitty things. But she has suffered in a different way, and I can understand?—"

"That's just it. The suffering was different, but you have both experienced horrible things that the other hasn't. And it's fair to criticize your ignorance of this world, but it's not fair to judge you based on the type of suffering you faced. Two people can have shitty lives at the same time. I've felt your pain, and I've felt hers. But she thinks hers is worse because it is different. And that is the frustration I have with her.

"It's the same frustration I have with your brother. They both play the ‘woe is me' card. If you look at my scars, you're gonna think that I have been through worse things than you have. But I've felt my suffering, and I've felt yours, and they both hurt. They both hurt just as much. Because pain and suffering do not exist in a vacuum." She waved a dismissive hand at me as we came into a small clearing. "Doesn't matter right now anyway. We can gossip and talk more philosophy tomorrow. This looks like a decent spot to set up camp. Go back and guide everyone here. I'll stay put. Have one of the necromancers guide you toward me if you get lost."

As much as I liked Laila, it sometimes felt like she talked to hear herself talk more than anything. Supposed it was never much different with Amelia.

"Good thing they don't get lost." I nodded to my ravens overhead. With my fingertip, I made a come here motion. Sure enough, one dropped down from above. After fluttering just before me, it landed on my forearm. "Get me back to the others."

It flapped its wings, took flight once more, and started on the path we'd just come from.