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"
Chase's hard face softened, and a hint of his smile came back. "Get one?"
Richard nodded as he held up his red, sore left hand. "And it bites.".
The two turned and melted into the crowd entering the house, moving through the entry, across white marble floors, to the elegant central meeting hall. Marble walls and columns glowed with a cold eerie cast where the sunlight streaming in from above touched them. Richard had always preferred the warmth of wood, but Michael had maintained that anyone could go out and make what they wanted from wood, but if you wanted marble, you had to hire a lot of people who lived in wood houses to do the work for you. Richard remembered a time before their mother died, when he and. Michael played in the dirt, building houses and forts with sticks. Michael had helped him then. He wanted so much for Michael to help him now.
People Richard recognized greeted him, getting only a wooden smile or quick handshake. Since Kahlan was from a strange land, Richard was a little surprised to see how comfortable she was around all the important people. It had already occurred to him that she, too, must be someone important. Gangs of assassins didn't hunt down unimportant people.
Richard found it difficult to smile at everyone. If the rumors about things coming out of the boundary were true, then all of Westland was in danger. Country people in the outlying areas of the Hartland were already terrified to go out at night and had recounted stories to him of people being found partly eaten. He had told them it was just that they had died of some natural cause, and wild animals had found the bodies. Happened all the time. They said it was beasts from the sky. He had passed it off as superstitious nonsense.
Until now.
Even with all the people around, Richard felt overwhelmingly lonely. He was confused and didn't know what to do about it. He didn't know who to turn to. Kahlan was the only one who made him feel better, but at the same time she frightened him. The encounter on the cliff frightened him. He wanted to take her and leave.
Zedd might know what to do. He used to live in the Midlands before the boundary, though he would never talk about it. And then there was the unsettling feeling he had that all of this had something to do with his father's death, and his father's death had something to do with his own secrets, the secrets his father had placed upon him and him alone.
Kahlan laid a hand on his arm. "Richard, I'm sorry. I didn't know… about your father. I'm sorry."
With the frightening events of the day he had almost forgotten about it until Chase had brought it up… Almost.
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