Arianna shut Iktomi’s door and leant against it, tense after Halimae’s words. She took a few breaths, calming down as she saw how sickly Iktomi looked. She wished that he had never gone to deal with the gang. How could he have been so foolish to let himself fall into such a condition? He was lucky that she had gone along with him. Would he have died if she hadn’t been there for him? She surely would have gone looking for him if he disappeared, but she probably wouldn’t have found him alive.

[i]Oh, Iktomi,[/i] she thought, sighing softly. She pushed away from the door and moved over to him. She felt his forehead and winced, his temperature irregular. There was a rag on the night stand next to her, and she wet it and dabbed at his sweaty, pale face. Arianna had never seen him look so sick. It worried her to her core. [i]Please wake up,[/i] she murmured in his mind, hoping that he would hear her. She sat there for a while, focusing on his mind in hopes that there would be a reply. When none came, she set the rag down and sat in the chair next to his bed. With a sigh, she rested her elbows on her knees and held her face in her hands, feeling terrible. How could she leave him like this? Especially when Hali seemed keen on making him as powerful as he could ever be. She didn’t want him to forget her and become an even more power-hungry fool. Leaving seemed to be the best option for her, though. The Golden Mercenaries needed her help in taking down the military, and she knew that she would be useful to them. He would understand, wouldn’t he?

Arianna ran her hands over her face and looked up at him, wishing and hoping that he would wake up now. She had originally intended on speaking with him once he woke up, but now she had no choice but to leave without really saying goodbye. How could she tell him everything that she wanted to tell him when he couldn’t hear her? She stood and paced the room, then dug through a desk. She found a pencil and paper and sat down again, using his night stand as a hard surface to write on. She wrote to him, telling him all of her thoughts and words that she would have told him if he were awake. It filled up both sides of the paper.

She signed her name at the bottom, then folded the letter up and folded up another piece of paper around it. Using the candle on his nightstand she sealed the letter, then pressed her finger into it as a sort of insignia. It hurt like hell, but knew it was the only way that he would know it was personally from her. On the front of the make-shift envelope, she wrote his full name, along with his childhood nickname in quotation marks.

Arianna propped the letter up on his nightstand and took a deep breath, hoping that he would read it and understand. She stood and looked down on him, her hand slowly slipping into his and squeezing it. [i]Please understand, Iktomi. We’ll see each other again someday. I promise. Read my letter,[/i] she told him, hoping his mind was at least more lively than his body seemed. With a soft sigh, Arianna pulled her hand away and turned, solemnly leaving his room.

She stopped by her “room” to get her bag and rapier, then headed down to the kitchen. She wrapped some bread in a cloth and put it in her bag, then filled a canteen to the brim with water. Without another word, she walked out of the mansion to where Kisheto was.

“Let’s go,” she said, not even stopping to see if he was following her.