Darius
“Everything belonged to Light.” My wife said out loud in a state of delirium.
I furrowed my brows and called for her again. “Princess?” She was looking at me but I doubted that she could actually hear what I was saying. I stared at her strangely. Was this a human thing?
All the servants around had halted from their duties and were now focused on my wife who was acting like a crazy person in the middle of the floor. I tsked, then reached for her, wrapping my palm around her small forearm. I pulled her up to her feet and she staggered, clearly having no strength on her legs.
I sighed in annoyance through my teeth. “What is wrong with you? Behave yourself.” I seethed through my teeth but she just stared at me. More like stared right through me. What was happening?
I shook her, hoping some sense would come to her she began muttering something under her breath that I couldn’t decipher. The murmurs and the whispers of the servants grew.
“Get me a glass of water!” I ordered no one in particular and everyone scrambled around, looking for something to do.
I held the small human in my hand and led her out of the castle. I sat her down on one of the benches outside the castle. Like clockwork, a servant handed a glass of water to me. I quickly grabbed it and held it against the mouth of my wife.
Absentmindedly, she drank the water. After two sips, I withdrew the glass from her lips and settled it on the ground.
“Are you alright?” I asked after a few moments of silence.
My wife sat quietly with her gaze on the floor. Her mother was right. She was quiet. But I had no use for that now. I scrutinized her body and noticed that she was shivering. It occurred to me that it was cold out. I took off my jacket and threw it over her shoulders.
She held onto the ends tightly, like she needed it to survive. Perhaps she was still shaken up about what happened earlier today with Thaddeus. And before that, I heard that she had gotten into a spat with Talia.
She was not fitting into Moratia, not one bit and it showed. I examined her features for the first time since I got married to her. Her brown eyes were unnaturally deep, and held some cloud of sadness behind them.
She had plump pink lips that somehow looked like they would be soft to the touch. Unconsciously, I reached for it with my thumb. She lifted her head to match my gaze.
Her eyes were glassy with tears and she was still shaking.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked with a soft voice. Her lips felt cold on my thumb and warm at the same time. I let my thumb slide down to her chin.
“Why am I doing what?” I countered.
“You should’ve just left me alone. I’m of no use to you, you know?” She threw her head back down, triggering a rise out of me.
With my thumb on her chin, I used my other fingers to lift her head back up so that I could look into those sweet teary eyes. “Look at me when you talk to me.” I couldn’t help but speak in a commanding voice which did nothing of help to the situation.
“Why?” she asked with a genuinely curious tone.
“Because…” I found myself trailing off at the end of my reply. Was it because I wanted to look at her? Impossible. “Because it is what I wish.” I answered instead.
She made a sound that sounded like a scoff, then shifted her face away, my lax grip on her slipping away. I let my hand fall back to my side, ashamed that I let myself touch her in the first place. Why did I do that?
“I’ll go now,” she said, slowly standing up from the bench, then pulling my jacket off her body. I held her shoulder down, stopping her.
“Don’t take it off. It’s cold.” I said.
She looked at me with an expression which I couldn’t decipher. Perhaps, she wanted to know if she had heard me well or if me telling her not to take off my jacket was a figment of her imagination.
“As I said, it’s cold.” I emphasized, retracting my hand. She nodded, pulling the jacket back up and acquainting herself well with it.
“You shouldn’t have brought me here,” she started to say. I kept quiet. Not knowing what else to do since she looked so low and beaten down.
“Light was the one you were to marry. You two spent more than eight years getting to know each other and all of that crashed after one day. You could’ve postponed the wedding till you found Light.
“What is the difference between staying single and being with me? You don’t treat me as your queen. You don’t treat me as your wife. You don’t even treat me like a person. I feel like I’m just a broken toy with no use.
“You don’t talk to me. You don’t want my opinion on matters of the kingdom. You don’t bed me. Yet, you don’t want to let me go. Why? Why are you doing this to me?” I watched as tears slid down from her glassy eyes to her pink cheeks.
“What use am I to you? Why won’t you let me go?” she asked, still crying.
This was the first time since we got married that she had ever voiced out against our marriage. I stared at her, not knowing what to say. She waited for me to say something but I just… couldn’t.
“I had to marry you,” I admitted. “I had to get married to a Vitalis princess.”
“But not to me. You didn’t need to get married to me. And even after you did, you didn’t need to alienate me from my family and my friends. You didn’t need to belittle me at every opportunity that you got. You didn’t need to bring in a mistress and flaunt her in front of me. You didn’t need to make me feel like a fool every time by putting me down in front of important people.
“You didn’t need to do all of that. You did it all by yourself. All because you wanted to. No matter what explanation you have to give, the truth is that you’ve been treating me badly because you blame me for not being Light.” I took a step back, ready to deny her claims.
“I don’t-”
“Don’t deny it. You may say that you hate Light but she is the one you wanted. She is the one who must’ve fit all the ideal qualities of what your wife and queen should be. Then she disappeared and you had no one to vent the blame on but me.
“Unfortunately for me, no matter how much I want to, I can not be Light. I am not Light. I will never be Light. I’m Hope. No one seems to acknowledge that, but Light and I might share the same blood but we are two different people. I’m Hope. Not Light. And you need to know that.” She reached for my shirt and fisted it around her fingers.
“I’m Hope. Why don’t you see that? Why doesn’t anyone see that? I’m Hope. Hope! Hope! Hope!” My hands automatically wrapped around her as she cried into my chest.
I didn’t even know what to do to comfort her but maybe just holding her was enough. Along the line, she stopped talking and eventually tired down. I noticed that her breathing had evened. I lifted her chin up to see that she was sleeping.
I swept her off her feet and hogged her body close to mine. I carried her back into the castle, where servants were eagerly waiting for my return. At the glance of me holding the human, their eyes widened in surprise and their gaze followed me till I disappeared up the stairs.
I went straight to her room where Arsen was standing guard. My nose flared at the sight of him. Who did he think he was guarding when my wife was right here in my arms? The second he saw me, his eyes widened.
“Your Ma-” One look from me and he shut his mouth. I nodded at him to open her doors, and he did so without a word.
I got her inside the room and laid her down on the bed. She was still wearing my jacket. I decided to leave it on her, then drew the cover over her. I stood over her bed, watching her sleeping figure. Her eyes had turned red and puffy due to her crying. Her cheeks were as red as a tomato.
I made her like that. She cried so much because of me. Suddenly feeling guilty, I turned my back to her and walked out of the room where Arsen still stood guard.
“You. Where were you when she left the room?” I asked him, anger slowly seeping into my tone.
“The Commander came to speak with my lady and ordered me away. After she left, I came back to stand at guard. I had no idea that she was not inside. I only assumed she was because… she has nowhere else to go.” He said the last part with a strangled tone.
Talia came here? Did she perhaps say something that set off the princess to absolutely lose it like she did? It was a logical explanation. I ran my hand through my hair as I thought of it.
“I apologize. I will lay down my life for my ignorance.” Arsen said, going down to his knees like any soldier in his place would do. As punishment, I should kill him.
But the image of the princess’s teary eyes at the idea of me killing him had me debating another punishment. “Stand up. You’ll receive your punishment at dawn.” I dismissed and he stood up.
Something about his gaze doubled the guilt gnawing at my insides. I turned my back to him and trotted down the hallway. I didn’t stop walking even when I went inside my room. I made for my open balcony and stopped when I grabbed the guide.
I feel like I’m just a broken toy with no use.
Words she said started to replay inside my head and weigh down on me. So she felt like that all this time but said nothing to me. All those time that I had thought that she looked down on me and my people, I was wrong.
She only felt out of place.
Was she right? Have I been treating her like a ghost because she wasn’t Light? But I didn’t have any feelings for Light. Though we had grown up with each other. Every childhood memory I had, Light was in it. Either she was spoiling the memory or she was making it her own, she was still there.
Maybe I had gotten used to her feistiness, so much so that I had expected the same from her sister. Maybe not getting the reaction I used to get from Light must’ve made me angry. I don’t know.
I slapped my hand over my face and drew it down.
“What is this feeling that I’m feeling?” I asked myself as I covered my face with my palms.
Was it betrayal? Guilt? Like?
“I don’t know.”
Out of all the things that the Vitalis princess said tonight, I could say that there was one that I was certain of its accuracy. I shouldn’t have married her. There were so many other options that I could’ve taken at that point but I was angry, I was in disarray.
Parting from the Morati knife put me on edge. I was afraid. I still am. Light was out there and she was with it. I couldn’t think straight. I just wanted revenge.
I knew how much Light cared for sister. So I took her for myself. Just the way Light took the Morati knife. I took her sister away. The way I felt anxious about being away from the Morati knife was the way I made her sister feel anxious by being with me.
What have I done?
I was wrong. I was so wro-
“Darius!” Someone called out. I turned around to see Orion standing with something in his hands.
“What is it?” I asked with a voice so unrecognizable and vulnerable.
“She sent a letter.”