Chapter 7: Realization

Then the day came when the thugs arrived on schedule — and Ursa didn't.

"Where the hell where you?!" Terrill snapped at Ursa. "They could have killed me. It was only their fear that you would still show up — word has gotten around — that got me out of there at all!"

"You're just like they are," Ursa said through her sudden tears, meeting him for the last time at their secret rendezvous. "Worse than they are," she added. "Not only don't I believe any of that stuff we've taken was ever yours, but I don't even think that was your mother's necklace. Why did you do this to me?!"

Of course it hadn't been Terrell's mother's necklace. Terrell barely knew his mother, and had been in an orphanage since age nine when no family could keep his behavior problems in check. The necklace had been nicked from a jewelry store just to give to Ursa. But he wasn't going to tell her that.

"I'm not anything like them!" he replied strongly, grabbing her chin and trying to raise it. "They steal from innocent people. The fact that I take some of their ill-gotten gains punishes their own bad behavior," he insisted.

"It's all stealing," Ursa said, her face in her hands.

Terrell glanced around. They were still alone, for now.

"This isn't a good place to talk," he told her. "And there are some things you need to know."

"More lies," she insisted, still refusing to look at him.

"No more lies," he promised. "You'll know this is true beyond a doubt when I tell you. But can we talk somewhere a little more private, please."

That wormed into Ursa's own sense of caution and self-preservation, as he'd known it would. Without further words Ursa took him and flew back to her eerie.