Chapter Six:  Helios and the Hereafter
Living in Helios was horrible for my health, to understate things.  Alcohol was everywhere.  Flash, the realm's most addictive drug, was shipped in daily, under bribes to the customs officials.  To ease my pain and humiliation, I indulged heavily in both.  I don't think I wanted to remember who I was or the life I had once lived.  I cut off all contact with Lexa.  I was just too ashamed of what I had become.
Next
It was around this time that I chanced to meet a young man named Jace.  He was a sailor in the Red Dragon's navy and this was my first real contact with that expanding empire.  Jace was young, idealistic, and stupid.  It's amazing how often those three traits go together.  We met in a tavern during his first shore leave.  He became one of my regular customers and it wasn't long before he was rather taken with me.  I must admit, I liked him too.  He
was different from the other sailors.  Less jaded.  And he genuinely believed that there were greater forces at work, forces like love and hate.  Soon, Jace took it into his head that it was his destiny to rescue me from my life of sin and vice.  I think that he genuinely loved me.  Unfortunately, I couldn't see my fondness for the boy turning into love and so when he asked me to marry him and leave Helios behind, I said no.  Like a faithful puppy though, he continued to ask me, regularly, for the next year.  Finally, one day, he disappeared.  I learned later
from his companions that he had been killed.  I did not have time to grieve, however, because something happened, something that would change my life again.  Ewan had showed up in Helios.  He was still mad to find me, but so frazzled that he arrested the wrong person.  Messed up though I was, I knew right and wrong and exposed myself in order to free the unfortunate soul.  Sadly, it was around that same time that I learned that Dalia was in Helios, dying.  I visited her in the hospital and she barely recognized me.  Nevertheless, she charged me with an important responsibility.  She asked me to look after her daughter Loretta.  I had a little time.  Ewan was hot on my heels and I knew I would have to get Loretta out of Catalan fast.  The
solution to my problem came in the form of a mysterious young man named Aden.  Aden told me that he knew who I was and that he wanted to help me.  In exchange for his help, however, I was to journey to a Hylian ghetto, ravished by the Red Dragon, called Maze Island.  I agreed to go along with him, I certainly had nothing to lose.  Aden was a man of his word.  He got us out of Catalan before Ewan could arrest me again and even shipped Loretta to her grandparents back in Hyrule.  His next feat, however, was by far the most remarkable.  He spent an entire year working to sober me up.
Along with his friends, Aden put every effort into ridding me of my horrible addictions.  He sat beside my bed during the hallucinations, the night sweats, the fevers, the madness.  Finally, my head was clear.  And that was when Aden told me why he wanted me to come with him.  He and his friends were planning a rebellion against the Red Dragon's forces on Maze Island.  He needed me, the princess of Hyrule, to stand as a figure head in his ranks.