"My Lord, he only—"
"I told you to stay in the shadows," he hissed, spinning around.
My heartbeats increased, my hand clutching the lace handkerchief in the folds of my dress. An unwanted tension began to bubble in me.
In two strides, he was in my space, his presence overwhelming me, stealing breaths from my throat. For some reason, he wasn't only displeased, he was infuriated.
He reached out, his gloved fingers snatching the lace from my hand and tossing it into the fire without a second thought. My body instinctively reacted to save the souvenir which further enraged him.
He grabbed the wrist, jerking me towards him roughly. My body shivered the instant my chest collided with his hard armor.
"Your habit of gaining the mercy of other men through these tears truly disgusts me. Tell me, woman, how many men do you need around you to please you?"
"Please, My Lord, do not accuse me." I cried, the tears spilling over despite my best efforts to choke them back.
I knew each tear I shed, it only severed our non-existent bond, it threw me lower in his eyes. But, I had no control over them, they ran on their own.
"I was alone. You left me there to be mocked. What is my fault if someone granted me compassion you couldn't?"
"You lure them with your tears. Those women in your town were absolutely right. You use this skin and tear as a weapon." He countered, his grip tightening but his words clenched my chest tighter.
This comment. Not the first time I heard it. Yet the fact it came from him shattered a piece of my heart.
"But, your manipulative tears won't affect me, woman. Do you know why?"
He leaned down, his face inches from mine. His silver eyes stared directly into my soul.
I shook my head, my body trembling so violently I thought I might collapse against his painful grip that made the skin red.
"Because I hate women like you," he hissed, the words dripping with a venom that stunned me.
I blinked, tears glistening in my eyes, searching for a lie in his.
There was none. What did I do to deserve that? What was my sin?
"Weak. Pathetic. Needy. Using your weakness as a hook to drag men down into your misery. But, I am not among those weak men who get manipulated by a woman's façade of fragility."
He shoved me away, a dismissive, rough push that sent me stumbling back against the cold stone wall. Breathless, I refused to break the gaze.
"Stay here. If you move from this spot, I will chain you. Then I will see to whom you will crawl to."
He turned on his heel and marched out, the heavy slam of the door served as a nail on my coffin. My eyes fell on my empty hands as I sank to the floor, my heart shattered into a thousand pieces.
What was my fault to deserve such resentment from my own husband?
I had survived the streets, the hunger, and the beatings, but his words had done what a lifetime of poverty couldn't.
They had made me wish I truly didn't exist.
I could no longer bring myself to sit on the bed, I no longer considered myself worthy of doing so.
I sat in the darkness, on the floor, weeping for the soul he said I didn't have.
BOOM.
The floor beneath me shuddered. A distant, muffled explosion echoed through the castle, followed by the shrill, piercing sound of a silver trumpet.
The King's alarm.
The screams started a heartbeat later. Shouting, the clash of steel on steel, and the heavy thud of bodies hitting the floor above me.
"M-My Lord…?" I called, crawling to a corner, panicking on what to do where the door was locked and the windows were too high, leaving no space for me to escape.
The coup hadn't just begun. It was washing through White Haven in a wave of blood.
And I was trapped in a locked room, alone, with no protection, and a husband who had just told the world he hated the very air I breathed.
"Lord Kaldric!!" I tried screaming, at the very least to get the door opened but no answer came for quite a while.
I sat in the corner, shivering, shutting my eyes in dread.
Soon, the door to the chamber was splintered apart. Four men surged in, their faces hidden by a dark mask, their rapiers stained with the fresh blood of the King's guard.
"St-Stay away. Do- Don't you dare to come cl-closer."
I scrambled back, but there was nowhere to go.
"The Commander's bride," the man hissed, his eyes wide with the frantic adrenaline of a traitor.
"L-Lord Kaldric will ev-eviscerate you… D-Don't- Ah!"
A rough hand seized my hair, hauling me to my feet, while the cold edge of a dagger pressed deep into the soft skin of my throat, silencing me instantly.
"Move! To the balcony!"
They dragged me out into the chaos of the Great Hall. The air was thick with the scent of blood and the smoke of guttering torches.
Below, the King was surrounded by his loyal knights, and at the front of that line, a black-clad demonic Knight was reaping through the rebels with a claymore that fed on the blood of endless to reach such sharpness.
Lord Kaldric.
"HALT!" the rebel leader bellowed from the balcony, pulling my head back until I was forced to look down at the slaughter. My eyes immediately locked on My Lord, losing my breaths, my posture.
"Drop your steel, Dawnstride! Or your wife's blood will paint these stones before the King's!"
The fighting didn't stop. Lord Kaldric didn't even break his stride as he cleaved through a rebel's shield and slit his throat. He finally paused, standing amidst a pile of bodies created by none other than him, and looked up.
The heartless gaze of the Commander of the Obsidian Pillar. He did not see his wife.
He saw a… burden.
"You waste your breath," Lord Kaldric's voice rang out, lacking a single tremor of hesitation.
"I am a Knight of the Emberspear. My blade, my soul, and my life belong to the Crown. Nothing- and no one- is above the King's safety."
"She is your wife!" the rebel screamed, pressing the blade harder into my neck. I whimpered when the pain settled accompanied by a thin line of red that began to trickle down my neck.
"She is a casualty of war," Lord Kaldric started to walk towards them.
The Bandits shivered at the unwavering bloodlust in his eyes. His grip tightening on his sword.
"Kill her if you must. I will simply step over her body to take your head."
The rebels faltered, stunned by the sheer, inhuman lack of mercy. I stared for a second before my body loosened in defeat, accepting it as my end, the end of his burden.
I felt a strange, hollow peace settle over me. I looked down at him for the final time.
The man who wrapped me in his cloak, who had guarded my tent, tied my laces, and who was now sentencing me to death without a blink.
'This isn't the end I imagined, I thought I would die miserably on the street.' I thought, a small, genuine smile touching my lips.
'But, my stomach is full. I have fine wool over my skin. I have seen the world from the back of a warhorse. I had more than a beggar like me ever deserved.'
I closed my eyes, ready for the steel to bite deep that never arrived. Instead, all that reached my ears was a familiar melodic resonance.
"What a waste of such exquisite green,"
A voice drifted through the air. A sharp, calm, and hauntingly precise. My eyes fluttered open, lifting my gaze up.
A silver blade whistled through the smoke, cutting the wind. Before the rebel could even gasp, a throwing dagger buried itself with a sickening thud into his eye socket.
The grip on my hair vanished.
I looked up to see Earl Emerson standing on the opposite balcony of the floor above. Still in his graceful form, a second dagger spinning lazily between his fingers.
"Lord–"
"Eradicate the fools." He ordered dominantly.
I fell to my knees as the bodies slumped behind me. He signaled his own hidden archers to open fire on the remaining rebels around me and His Majesty.
I blinked and the rest of them were dead too. He cleared the whole area with a single order, I could comprehend the deathly presence Sir Aldwin mentioned.
"Beautiful."
He gave me a wink– the same soft, terrifyingly sharp expression he had displayed in the chamber. Maintaining a mischievous but elegant smirk, he climbed the balcony and jumped onto mine.
"The Commander has the heart of stone," He let out a soft chuckle, pressing his handkerchief over my neck.
"But I have the precision of a hawk. And I find I am not quite finished with the Lady's company." He commented, holding me by the waist as my eyes stared at the man beside in admiration.
"Where is yours?" He asked casually, "He… burned it." I gulped that made him let out a louder, mocking laughter that served as a scar on the Commander's pride.
Lord Kaldric's grip on his sword tightened until the gauntlet creaked.
Shifting his eyes back to me who stood motionless in my place while he was witnessing his wife in the arms of her saviour.