Chapter 68 #2
“And in return, he taught me how to love. How to become something I had never dreamed I could be. For he made me humble, gentle and kind.” The tears began falling down my face. “And that is his crime. That he taught me those things.” I lowered my hands to my sides, unable to say anything more.
Silence settled over the room again, but this time, it lasted only a moment.
For it was broken by the words of someone I had never expected to stand beside me.
Someone who had never hugged me or kissed me, who had never read me a story or visited me when I called for her. Someone whose milk I had never tasted, whose warmth I had never known.
My mother descended the steps and turned toward the king.
“My king.”
My mother curtsied. Her royal gown, sewn from the wool of Terza rabbits, now shimmered beneath the light. She placed her hands over her stomach and, for a moment, looked over my broken, filthy body before speaking in a voice that truly belonged to a queen.
“I was not a mother, nor was I a wife. Heavens know the truth of that as much as the people do. But my king, now I beg for my daughter. I beg of you to let my child, our child, love. Let her love with all the love she possesses in her heart.”
The queen spoke the words slowly, her voice unwavering.
“I was taken here by force, and I will not let the same fate fall upon my child,” she said, turning toward me.
“The entire court knew the truth of the love I had left behind in my homeland. The entire court knows that even today I wear this black because I mourn him, and I am not afraid to admit it.”
The king winced at those words.
“But I will not allow myself to watch my daughter wear black for the rest of her life as well. I will not allow some lord or prince to take her in her grief and force her to bear his children. I will not, and I cannot.”
She shook her head.
I wondered whether she knew that even if they took me away and forced me into it, I would carve his babe out of me and then kill him in his own bed.
“My king, my husband, I beg of you. Please, let them live the life I never could.”
At that moment, the king leaned forward. He waved his hand toward the guards, and I heard the doors opening behind me. My skin prickled, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. I turned around, and this time I could not stop the gasp from escaping my lips.
Two guards were dragging Lysande toward me.
He could not walk or even hold his head upright. They simply dragged him toward me exactly as he was beneath that sword, hungry, filthy, and almost dead, before throwing him at my feet.
Before he struck the floor, I threw myself beneath his head and pulled it into my lap.
I didn't even hear when Mother returned to her place, nor when the king spoke again. I only turned his battered, sunken face toward me and pulled him against my chest.
His almost lifeless body lay limp against me, but I held him and hugged him. Beneath my hands, I felt every wound, across his back, through his hair, and along his neck. I could smell every day he had spent without water to wash, but I didn't care.
I just held him against me and refused to let go ever again.
“Daughter.” Father's voice came from somewhere above me, as though he had already said it once before. I finally lowered Lys's body properly into my lap, wrapping one arm protectively around him before lifting my gaze toward the king. “Do you have anything else to say?” he asked.
I only shook my head and returned my gaze to my knight. I traced a finger along his jaw, now covered with a dirty beard, then over his broken nose and split lips. “There is not a word more to say, Father, but yours,” I told him.
He ran a hand over his face. “How can I allow this, daughter? You had everything you ever wanted. Why did you have to reach for the one thing you were never allowed to have?” he asked, his voice caught between pleading, anger, and sorrow.
I had no answer.
“How can I allow you to lower yourself to the point of marrying a knight? A princess, marrying a knight who can barely write his own name?”
I expected the people around me to laugh at that, but they didn't.
I turned to look at them and furrowed my brows when I saw their faces.
Most of them were not smiling at all.
They looked sad.
Eyes filled with tears or gazes lowered toward the floor, they waited silently for the next words.
“I do not care, Father, what I become. A princess or a merchant, as long as he lives. Look at him. Look at what they have done to him! It seems the words spoken in that arena have already been forgotten. He is my blood. His wounds are mine,” I hissed before flinching when Lys moved slightly,
but his eyes did not open.
Then Sando spoke, as though my words had reminded him of something.
“My king, he doesn't have to remain just a knight. It is known that the first Blood Knight did indeed become a lord and married the princess. Why mustn't we honor the history of our own ancestors?”
he asked as he descended the steps, speaking toward the audience before turning back toward the throne.
“Father, make him a lord. My sister and Lys himself spent their days among the common folk.
Meera has left, and she is not coming back, but what she fought for remains now vacant in ladyship.
“ He took a deep breath and then continued. ?Let my sister become the Princess of the People, let her take the place her sister occupied, and let her husband become a lord who shall understand the troubles of ordinary people better than any other man.
For who other than a man that knows no other life but the one of same pain?”
Everything began to blur, and my head started to ring, but I had to hold on a little longer. Just a little longer.
The king rose from the throne.
“The decision has been made,” he said.
But I was beginning to lose consciousness. The days of starvation and sleeplessness had finally taken their toll.
Everything became quiet. I did not know whether it was because of the simple fear people felt for the king's words or because I was simply slipping away.
“For his actions toward Princess Isolde, Lysande shall be stripped of his knighthood and…”
I no longer had the strength to hold Lys's head in my hands.
And then nothing else existed.