Chapter 18 : The Red Castle

48 4 10
                                    

After a week of reaching Tagia and meeting with Marigold. Diana managed to find a decent job as a waitress in a nearby tavern.

Louis, on the other hand, denied his royalty for the first time and joined the common people with their clothes and traditions, moreover he got himself a job as a blacksmith apprentice in a workshop on the other side of the Town.

Everything was going on the right track for a change; it was the first time since Diana left the palace that she really felt safe and not in danger in the wild or under the king's punishing and dictatorial hand

...till that one day, Alfred came back home with a nervous face.

He opened the door and passed himself in without greetings. He just went for a chair at the head of the table and sat in strange silence.

Marigold noticed the way he entered. She watched him from the kitchen. This wasn't the first time he came home feeling the toll of the whole world crushing on his shoulder. He was an outlaw in another country after all, and his life wasn't as easy as an aristocrat who spend his day, resting his lazy ass all the day long while others grind money for him, hoping for his continuous thirst for richness be finally sated one day.

But Marigold always had a way to go with this pioneer. One of the many ways a man can be tamed. Yet, at the same moment happy with it.

Food.

"What's wrong, my darling?" asked Marigold serving him some hot homemade food.

Alfred's eyeballs couldn't resist and he dug in almost instantly.

"Where's Diana?" answered Alfred with a full mouth.

"She should be here anytime now, her morning shift ends after about half an hour. Are there any news about your brother?"

The man stopped chewing the food. He stared with a confused look at his wife. Behind his eyes. There was always his inner self screaming.

How does she do that?

To look through the man's soul so easily and expose all his secrets. Maybe it is the food? Nevertheless, he didn't say a word.

Someone began knocking on the house's front door.

Marigold went to open the door. It was Louis, he returned from the blacksmith workshop he was working in.

"Greetings, my dear. How was your day?"

"Tiring. But what's not in men's life ?" He smiled.

"Well. Eating is! Your plate will be ready in no time!" She said as she went to the kitchen to serve another plate"

"Didn't Diana come back, yet?" Louis questioned Alfred after some greetings.

The man didn't answer him. He was just focusing on his food, eating in complete silence.

"Did something happen to her !?" Louis feared for her. Alfred's lack of speech was intimating in a way.

Marigold got out of the kitchen with another plate. "No, my dear. She is just late as always from that Traven, besides we are still in the early noon she will be here in no time"

"Then it is about your brother, isn't it?" Louis was curious, still no answer from the other side.

Marigold began to worry; so she grabbed a chair next to her husband.

"We can help you, we are your family Alfred. You can't just carry every problem on your shoulders, learn to share the burden before you break beneath it"

The man remained silent as he chewed his food without a reaction to his wife.

Marigold was disappointed, her eyes dropped. She frowned and stood up ready to leave..

A Tale of Two DaggersWhere stories live. Discover now