ISLA'S POV:

Why wouldn't Calik tell Loralai what he had told me?! Loralai probably thought I was insane now!

"It really seems like he's faking it, doesn't it?" Loralai asked tauntingly.

"He is!"

"Certainly," I could tell she didn't believe me.

"He really is! He told me so!"

Loralai let out a long, slow sigh. "Isla... Suppose he did tell you--which I still doubt myself, but say he did--how do you know he wasn't lying to you? Lying about where his loyalties lie just so you would trust him?

"He wasn't! I could tell! You didn't see him!'

"Isla... neither could you. Do you understand my point?

"That's not what I meant! You couldn't hear him... He was so depressed, so... serious."

"Isla, most bad guys are really good at acting."

"But Calik isn't a bad guy!"

"You just can't be sure... Until I see him do something that proves he isn't bad..."

"Loralai, you have to believe me!"

"Fine. I believe you. But I don't believe Calik."

Loralai swiftly changed the subject, "I've been meaning you ask you this for a while. Why does this Zaila person want you dead so badly anyway? I mean, you two are related right? Sort of?"

"How did you know that we're related?" I asked, glad to be moving on from... you know.

"She told me. When she tried to kill me in the woods after I wouldn't tell her where you were."

"I... I don't know. I think she always has. I think she's always despised me, but kept it hidden so that my father wouldn't suspect a thing. They were married before I knew it. And then... she killed him."

"Zaila killed your father?!" Loralai gasped in shock.

I continued to tell her the story. She knew a lot of it, but not the worst parts.

"I was only 9, and it was back when my father's city was still a good place to be..."

~

Sirens wailed from everywhere around me. I was returning home, after wandering around the city for a while, just for fun.

I'd recognized the sirens. They were police car sirens.

But what for? They were outside my house. This was definitely my house. I knew it. There was a sign in front of every house that had everyone's name engraved deeply into it, and in braille too. 

'Kunay Household' I ran my fingers over the braille dots again, just to be sure that this was in fact my house. It wouldn't be the first time I'd mistaken someone else's house for mine.

'Home to Finn, Zaila, and Isla Kunay.' This was definitely in my house.

'And Isabel in spirit.'

Yes. It was. Beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Suddenly, 2 or 3 pairs of feet stepped loudly out of my house.

At this age, my father and Zaila had told me that my sight would come to me. That I would.. grow out of my blindness, and as I result I did not try to get used to being blind, but rather to hope and hope to be able to see one day.

I see now they only fed me lies so I wouldn't give up and be sad. I'm not mad at my father for it, but I do wish he had told me the truth.

As I heard the footsteps, I screamed in fear.

The footsteps walked towards me, and I stumbled back, twice for every step I heard towards me.

"Are you Isla Kunay?"

I could only nod, so in shock that my voice had been stolen from me.

"Do you know where your mother is?"

Mommy? No, I hadn't seen Mommy all day... She went to the store to buy something, and then before she returned I left too...

I shook my head no.

"Well... your father... Someone decided to... say, slip something in something he ate. Something real bad. So... he's passed on now."

He was dead. Poisoned. He had been killed.

I knew what he meant when he said that. When you live in a city where literally everybody is.. Different, or very close to someone... Different, you tend to get a lot of deaths from people who don't like that.

And so I cried. I cried, and cried, and cried. I managed to choke out one question, "Who did this?"

The officer didn't respond for a moment. He finally said slowly, "We... We don't know. Your father had a lot... a lot of enemies."

That's not how you comfort a 9-year-old whose father was just poisoned, you piece--

I only cried harder.

The officer mumbled something about how much he hated doing this and how he was never having kids.

"W...Where's your mom at?"

This is really not how you comfort a crying 9-year-old. 

 I really hope you never had any kids. But if you did, they're probably dead now anyways. And you too probably.

~

"And my father didn't have as many enemies as everyone thought he did. If someone didn't like... Different people, they attacked and killed hundreds, maybe thousands, but not one. Even if the one they killed was the leader of the city. If they wanted the city to collapse by taking out the leader, they would've killed me, and Zaila too. The only person I could think of--even now--that might have wanted my father dead..." I trailed off for a moment, then continued.

"--was Zaila. She wanted complete control over my father's city, and the only way to do it would be to kill him before I was old enough to take control myself. If I got old enough, and then my father died, I would take control, not Zaila. But since I was much too young, there was nothing anyone could've done to stop Finn's City from becoming Zaila's City.There was nothing anyone could've done to stop Zaila from plunging my home into chaos."

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A/N real quick:

okay

so i haven't updated in a million years,

so this chapter is around 1000 words to make up for that.

yay

anyways,

i decided to expand a bit more on the whole 'Zaila murdered Isla's father' things, so that's what this chapter is mostly.

anyway x2, she did tell Loralai all of this stuff as well, so...