KALDRIC'S POV:
The town of Hast slept in a silence so profound, but for me, the night had become a suffocating interlude where my mind was submerged in chaos.
I sat on the ground by the dying embers of the hearth in our rented quarters, my back against the bed, staring into the graying ash.
On the bed, Ardelle's breathing was soft and rhythmic, the sound of an innocent soul whose exhaustion overwhelmed her while waiting for me to climb under the covers and sleep with her.
I should have been resting too. I should have been preparing for the morning's scouting and meeting with the informant.
Instead, my hand drifted to the parchment. The ink was burning through the paper, searing my skin.
From the first sentence to the last one was a reminder of the man I vowed to become and any hindrance between it was unendurable.
"Since you are married, Kaldric, do not forget your vow."
The first line from my mother's script screamed at me. No greeting. No questions about my wellbeing or the match.
A stern reminder.
"Do not let the woman weaken you, beauty is a trap, words are manipulation. You do not trust that commoner. Remember your father's shame and the promise you made to me.
Keep the woman in her place and remind her of her position. You do not have to be soft or merciful; Everything is a deception, Son.
You do not fall in love with that woman, Kaldric. To love is to surrender your honor to a lie."
The paper clumbled in my hand, my breaths hastening as I shut my eyes, and the stone walls of the inn, Ardelle breaths, melted away, replaced by the suffocating, perfumed air of my childhood home.
15 YEARS AGO.
I was fifteen years old, standing in the shadows of the grand gallery, watching my father. He wasn't the Great Scholar the King praised once, he was a man reduced to a fawning servant.
He was kneeling at the feet of a woman whose beauty was so enticing that it made people turn their head, her smile so vibrant that it could melt stone, that woman was undoubted an epitome of temptation.
Lady Serenity.
She was his concubine and then, his second wife, the woman who had replaced my mother in everything but name.
My mother stood beside me, her hand gripping my shoulder until it bruised, I winced under the grip but didn't dare to remove her hand.
She was an average woman, her face lined with the bitterness of a wife who had been traded for a newer, brighter jewel.
"Look at him, Kaldric," she hissed with sheer hatred.
"Look at what 'beauty' does to a man of honor. It turns a lion into a dog. It makes him forget his firstborn. It makes him forget his blood."
"Does Father hate me?" I asked innocently.
"Yes. He does. Look at his other children. Why would he look at you? That is the worst thing about beauty."
She turned me toward her, her eyes wild with a desperate, dark wisdom.
"Never trust a beautiful face, my son. They are masks for the rot underneath. They are the weakness that breaks the strongest pillars."
"I… understand, Mother." Nodding, I turned on my heels and walked away, preparing for my march as the young squire.
But, before I left, I had a pinch on my chest. I wanted to see how my father was with his other children, the urge to find the light mentioned by my mother, my steps led to their domain.
I remembered sneaking into the East Gardens later that day.
Through the tall hedges, I watched them, my father, that woman, and the two children she had given him and the sight stunned me.
That day, I heard my father laughing from pure happiness for the first time in my life accompanied by the severe scar where I realized my worth and position.
My father was laughing. He was rolling in the grass, his noble robes stained with dirt which he couldn't care less about, as the children climbed over him like lion cubs.
"You lose, Papa! We won!" The children beamed.
"Okay, okay, I lost. You two won again."
The laughter, the sight of their sheer felicity, the serenity, all of it constricted my chest in an unexplainable way.
I had never felt the warmth of his hand unless it was correcting my stance with a training sword. I barely exchanged words with him, to be noticed or receive a smile was a distant matter.
Watching them, a toxic surge of envy and disgust had curdled in my chest, it was blazing my chest, turning me breathless.
He looked happy. He looked human. And yet, because of that happiness, my mother wept in the dark, and I was treated like a relic of a failed past.
My mother was right, look at that woman, acting so mightily, so high and faking her grace.
What a disgusting mask. I hate her. I hate him. I hate them.
At that moment, under the midday sun, I had made my vow.
'I will never love. I will never marry for passion. I will be the cold iron my father could not be. I will be the Pillar that is unbreakable.'
PRESENT:
The fire in the hearth hissed, snapping me back to the present. I blinked, back to where I sat, to the coldness in the room as the coals of that moment had died from my heart.
I glanced at Ardelle. She shifted in her sleep, a lock of hair falling across her face, her hand extending to find me next to her in her sleep but didn't and it emitted a groan from her.
My chest tightened, that same terrifying, suffocating warmth I had felt in the morning when she leaned her head on my shoulder. The same warmth I promised to kill from myself.
'She is weakening you,' the letter, my heart, my soul, my mother, everything whispered to me.
'She is the beautiful nightmare,'
I stood up, my movements stiff and overwhelmed by a sudden, violent urge to wake her and shout the words my mother had taught me.
To remind her that she was a beggar I had bought, not a woman I had chosen, not my bride, and I hate her.
I hate her. I hate her. I hate her— Repeat it until this is all echoed in her mind and shatters her.
But as I looked at her, curled like a ball, her shift off that not only exposed her cleavage but also the undesirable but faint mark on her neck.
I realized the horror of my situation. I had spent my entire life building a fortress to keep the shame of love out.
But Ardelle hadn't attacked the walls nor shaken then, she had simply slid in when I was vulnerable, and now, I didn't know how to perish her without destroying myself.
I turned away from the bed, my jaw set in a line of frozen obsidian. I would be cold. I would be harsh. I would follow the vow I made to the boy in the garden, to my heart.
Because if I let myself love her, I wouldn't just be breaking a promise to my mother.
I would be becoming my father. And that was a death I couldn't survive.