Chapter Eleven
Raya lay in her bed in her apartment in World's End, shivering every now and then, despite the warmth of her blankets. She was certain that she must have come down with pneumonia, even though the katabans healer who had seen her had told her that she would be fine with some bed rest and food and water. Raya didn't believe the healer. She felt so awful and sick that she knew she had to have come down with something, even if she didn't yet know what.
I just want to go home now, Raya thought, tightening her grip on her blankets and trying to keep the tears from flowing. I don't want to be in the Tournament anymore. I don't want to be on World's End. I just want to go back to Carnag. If that means I'll only become the Queen of Carnag when I get older, then so be it.
Raya was used to assassination attempts on her life. She was royalty, after all, which meant that she had always been the prime target for assassination even from the day she was born.
But this one had been different. This was the closest that Raya had ever come to actually being killed in cold blood. And she would have been killed had it not been for the aid of the other godlings. There was no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Had things been even slightly different—had the others come even slightly late—Raya knew for a fact that she would not be lying here in her bed, thinking about how she could have died if things had turned out differently.
It brought to mind that letter that she had found on her bed on her first day on World's End, that letter that had claimed that justice always reaches the destination to which it travels. Raya had blown it off as nonsensical and without teeth, but now she was starting to think that it had been very serious. Might the letter have been placed on her bed by that four-armed assassin? But if so, why did he wait so long to attack her? And just what was he doing out on the street in the open like that anyway?
Despite going over these questions in her mind, Raya found that she didn't really care about the answers. What mattered was that she should have been dead and that World's End was no longer quite as safe as she used to think that it was.
But I can't leave until I win or lose in the Tournament, Raya thought. She brushed the tears out of her eyes. And I am not even sure I want to compete at all. I mean, if I do win, then I'll become the Goddess of Deception, Thieves, and Horses. Thieves! What would Father say about that?
But Raya had not yet tried to contact either of her parents and tell them about this recent assault on her life. It wasn't that she thought they wouldn't believe her—her parents always believed her about everything—but she just didn't want to worry them at the moment. It was an odd internal conflict. On one hand, she wanted to tell her parents all about what she just experienced, but on the other hand, she also didn't want to tell them for fear that they might become too worried about her ability to participate in the Tournament.
Raya put her hands over her face. This was all too much for her. Raya hadn't expected to be feeling such stress before the Tournament started. All she wanted to do was sleep and forget about it all, but she knew that she couldn't even do that much, because she remembered what Braim had said earlier, about how that same assassin had tried to kill him in his sleep not long ago, which meant that he might try to do the same thing to her if she wasn't careful.
Despite how tired and worn out she felt, Raya sat up and swung her legs over the side of her bed. She then stood up and made her way to the door of her room, which she cracked open slightly and peered through to look at the living room of her apartment.
She saw Carmaz lying asleep on the sofa with one arm draped over his body and the other hanging over the side of the sofa. He looked like he was sleeping deeply, his chest rising and falling with his breath, but he was completely silent. He didn't snore at all, which Raya found made him a lot better than some noblemen she had once known.
Raya wasn't sure exactly why she had asked for Carmaz to stay in her apartment with her. As a matter of fact, Raya couldn't remember much about the actual attack at all. The trauma must have messed with her memories. She just remembered Carmaz and his friend (whose name she honestly could not remember at the moment, probably because his friend hadn't especially impressed her and wasn't even participating in the Tournament) saving her from the assassin, but even they would have gotten killed if Braim and the others had not arrived in the nick of time.
Raya didn't understand why Carmaz had bothered to try to save her. Perhaps he had been sent by Alira to fetch her when she stormed away from the Stadium, but even so, he had put his own life at risk just to save hers. And the two of them didn't even know each other that well. Of the few interactions they had had so far, they had all been fairly antagonistic. She had never met anyone from Ruwa before. In fact, until she met Carmaz, Raya had assumed that anyone from that island was an uncivilized savage who didn't even know how to count beyond ten.
But Carmaz was completely different from the stereotype that she knew. While hardly as handsome as some of the princes and noblemen that she had known back on Carnag and Shika, Carmaz still looked far better than someone from Ruwa had any right to look. He was also a lot smarter and stronger than most of the handsome princes she knew, though a lot less respectful than most.
More strangely, though, was why Carmaz had agreed to protect her at all. It was possible that Carmaz had explained his reasoning for staying in her apartment with her at some point, but that had probably happened while her mind was traumatized and so she had probably missed it. Still, Carmaz had not seemed like he liked her all that much, so why would he agree to stay here with her, especially since she already had some guards outside?
Whatever Carmaz's motives may have been, Raya found that she liked the idea of him protecting her. Maybe there wasn't much that Carmaz could do against the assassin, should that assassin ever attack her again, but just the knowledge that he was here with her made Raya feel much safer than she had since the attack.
She considered going out and waking him up, but then decided that Carmaz needed to sleep perhaps even more so than she did. Even so, Raya stood there watching him for a few minutes longer before closing the door and returning to her own bed, having found that she was actually tired enough to rest after all. And she slept well that night, in spite of all of that had happened recently.
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Gathering of the Chosen Page 11