*Rion*
I was so stunned by what the princess had just told me that it took me a while to respond.
“You'll go with us, willingly?" I asked, still unsure what to make of it.
I wondered if she was playing me for a sucker, or if she genuinely meant it. She could have been saying anything just to get my guard down. It was within the realm of possibility that all she wanted was for me to become complaisant.
My thoughts drifted to her motives, which she had plenty of.
But then I realized how much she had been through in the past few days. I looked at things from her point of view and knew she had been through quite a bit. She had been kidnapped, but she had also encountered dangers she had never been through before.
She had fallen ill. I had never intended for her to get hurt along the
