Chapter Three #4
I finally accepted that I didn’t have any chance or any hope of ever leaving Tygeria.
Werros told me over and over again that I might as well accept my fate and make the best of my situation, so I’d decided finally that I would.
I’d forgotten the reason I was fighting it in the first place.
He told me how lucky I was to be married to the king, and the priests were still working to eradicate my memories of Davos as well, and before long, I found that I could hardly remember him at all.
He was like a distant, beautiful dream that had happened to another person.
They were still giving me the pills that helped me forget, and which they assured me would not hurt the child.
I spent my days in a pleasant fog. It was so much better that way and it hurt much less.
I really tried a few times to picture what Davos had looked like, but I couldn’t quite do it.
I began to get ready for my wedding ceremony with Werros.
Every day, for a week, we met with a wedding planner and Werros made all the choices for our ceremony. It was fine—he knew much more than I did anyway, and I didn’t really care, so I deferred to him in everything. It was easier that way.
“Sapphire robes, of course,” Werros told the planner. “The color will match his beautiful eyes, I think,” he said, stroking my hair and petting me as I sat beside him. My eyes were really more blue-green, but I didn’t like to argue with him. What was the point?
“I’d like his hair to be down on his shoulders. And rouge his cheeks and lips to enhance his beauty even further. He’s far too pale these days.”
“I’ll see to it, Your Majesty,” the planner said.
After he left, Werros took me to bed to fondle me. He stayed mostly above the waist. He had kept his word about not making love to me until after the baby was born, though I had forgotten why we made that rule in the first place. Something about it being perhaps not the best for the child.
One day, perhaps only days before our wedding, I heard a loud celebration in the streets, with men shouting and shooting their disruptors off in the air.
The church bells rang wildly, and the servants ran in to tell me that a huge procession was coming down the streets toward the palace. I went out on my balcony to see it.
The people were shouting that the Dyson and some other survivors had miraculously been found alive after that terrible battle on Myrthia on Lathalen Hill.
They had come home! I heard the servants talking about it and they said that after surviving the initial attack on the field hospital, they had run into the heavy forested mountains, and they hid in a village of indigenous people from the planet of Myrthia.
These people were a stranger to technology and had no way to contact the Tygerians.
The Tygerian soldiers had destroyed the Alliance outpost on the way out, so nothing had been left and there was no way to contact the outside world to let anyone know that they were still alive.
Plus, the Tygerians had early warning of the attack on the hospital from a spy inside the outpost who had risked his own life to get word to them in time for most of them to escape.
So many of them had miraculously survived, but they had to wait until a passing trading ship landed on the planet before they could be rescued or even get a message out.
They had returned home after all these long weeks to fanfare and acclaim and were being welcomed as returning heroes.
From the balcony, I watched the procession get closer and I thought I saw the flag of the Dyson from a distance.
I’d had my medicine already though, and I didn’t remember exactly who that was or what he looked like.
I heard one of the servants saying he was a handsome, brave man.
He was marching out in front, and he seemed to be familiar to me, like perhaps I’d seen him before—maybe on the news, but I couldn’t be sure.
All Tygerian men had a similar look, after all.
Of course, I was sure none of them were as handsome as my soon to be husband, King Werros.
Still, it was wonderful that the Dyson and the other men had survived and had finally made it home.
Praise be to Veran.
?? ?? ??
Suddenly, a loud knock came on the door, interrupting the story Blake had been telling.
Rakkur and Blake were startled by it, and Rakkur felt almost like he had been awakened from a long dream.
Rakkur jumped from the bed, thinking it might be news of Tariq’s arrival, and when he flung the door open wide, he was a bit surprised to see his father King Davos standing there in the hallway.
Rakkur, I wanted to speak to you about all this that’s going on with you and Tariq before he arrives.
I understand he’ll be landing sometime later today.
” He looked past Rakkur to Blake. “Oh hello, nobyo,” he said, strolling in the room.
“I wondered where you’d gotten off to. What are you two doing in here? ”
“Omak has been keeping me company,” Rakkur told him. “He was telling me the story of when the two of you ‘split up,’ as he calls it. When the people of Tygeria thought you’d been killed in battle. I never knew about that before.”
Davos frowned. “That was a very long time ago. Before any of you children were born. And I don’t like to think about it. Or talk about it, for that matter.” He walked over to sit beside Blake and put an arm around his waist.
“You look upset, nobyo. Don’t tell that awful story if it makes you anxious.”
“It’s all right. It was long ago, as you said. I thought telling it might help Rakkur to know that every couple goes through some really rough patches here and there.”
“Yes, but that was much more than any ‘rough patch,’ as you call it. It was terrible for both of us.”
“Omak thought that you were dead for a while,” Rakkur said, his eyes still wide.
“Yes. He had a lot of help with that notion too. But I didn’t know that then. I thought he had forgotten me. That he’d probably never really loved me to begin with. Because I was insecure about your omak’s feelings in those days.”
He leaned over and kissed the side of Blake’s face.
“That was all on me, and I should have trusted him more. But you must understand that his people and mine were the most bitter of enemies at the time, and when Blake first came to live with me, he still hated me and feared me. It was hard to have trust in each other. I forgot for a time how alone and vulnerable he was, because of my own hurt feelings, and unscrupulous people took advantage of him. Of me, too, for that matter.”
“Oh, finish the story, Father, please. He had just got to the part where you were arriving back home, and he was outside on the balcony, watching the parade.”
He smiled at me and looked into my eyes.
He told me once that mine were “as bottomless and blue as my omak’s.
” I had always greatly favored my omak in almost every way—Blake was beautiful, brave, excitable, and passionate about so many things, and I was glad people thought I was like him.
I wanted to be just like him. They said Tariq was a lucky man.
As lucky as my father had been when Blake fell in love with him.
My father had told me I would lead Tariq a merry chase for the rest of their lives, like Blake had led him.
But only if Tariq was very, very lucky. I thought it was a romantic thing to say, but then I was always a sucker for romance.
Outside of my boys and my husband, I had to say I loved nothing better than a good romantic story.
Not that this story was about romance or any of that.
It was a terrible story about treachery, jealousy and betrayal.
I hated hearing how my omak had been so mistreated.
His handsome face had an odd look on it as he looked at my father.
I’d seen that look before, when Blake would insist on bringing me into their bed almost every night, and Father would pretend to mind, but he didn’t, really.
It just meant that Blake would lie closer to him and spend the night wrapped up in his arms. He looked like that now in a way, and I wondered if he wanted my father to wrap his arms around him.
But back to the story—my omak had left off when he was on the balcony looking out at the parade on the day they finally made it back home from Myrthia and Lathalen Hill. I settled back down to hear more. And this time, my father took over.