Displaced

Chapter 113

't sleep. Little surprise, there; he hadn't been able to sleep well for a long time. This was worse than usual, however. This wasn't the normal insomnia where he trudged through a stupor of guilt and regret, the kind which his love would soothe away with a heartfelt, loving embrace as they lied in their bed together. No, this was the old insomnia, the one ruled by fear that took the form of a single question: what if the witch actually came back, as she had threatened to, and stole away even more of him?

For more than a season after his first encounter, that fear had ruled his every waking moment. His mind became overwhelmed with suspicion, every odd movement, every slightly out-of-character utterance, every slight movement caught in his peripheral vision or heard outside his sight prompted the same paranoid thoughts and terrible anxiety. Was the guard in the corner of his eye a loyal soldier, or that blasted woman in disguise, waiting to strike? What about the ministers he spoke to, or the nobles he reluctantly met with, or the citizens who came to beg for his favor? How would he know, until the blade was buried in his chest?

Though he'd tripled security and implemented various procedures like secret code phrases to keep himself safe, he'd never felt safe, by and large because of the constant reminder that was his own existence. No matter how much he'd tried to forget and move on, he would be dragged back to the past each time he needed to speak. The curse the witch had left upon him showed no mercy. No matter what or how hard he'd tried, he'd found he could vocalize neither words nor meaning—except for the one time he'd pushed impossibly hard, that is.

In a way, though, that mistake had been perhaps the most fortunate mistake of his life, as it had brought him together with Tangwen. Being an unwed monarch had been its own brand of torture. It had long been tradition for the King of Kutrad to marry a member of the noble families, and to such ends, Iorweth had been bombarded with female suitors from the various families for years. No convention, festival, or meeting could conclude before every patriarch there had shoved their most eligible daughter in his face with the hopes that one would catch his fancy. This had not changed, even after the loss of his voice, though the women looked at him with less hope and more unease in their eyes after that.

Though nearing forty years of age, Iorweth had continued to resist marriage for a variety of reasons. First, it would make his life harder. His marriage would be more than just a joining of two people. It would be the joining of a noble house with his own. While he would gain the support of said house, it would come at the cost of the support of most of the other noble houses. Their insubordination would intensify as they turned their sights on him with greater focus than before, for they knew as well as he that the support of his wife's house would come with the expectations of reciprocation—in total, a net loss.

Second, and—if he were to be honest—more importantly, the thought of joining with a noble made him want to vomit. He already despised interacting with them and their pompous attitudes. The men seemed far more interested in hunting—literally with animals and metaphorically with women—than in effectively administering their domains, which only made running the country more difficult. He enjoyed the occasional hunt just as much as any other red-blooded male, but there was a limit, surely! The women talked only of gossip and fashion, both of which seemed to change by the day. He was supposed to live with one of these people for the rest of his life and interact with their family with great frequency? Not if he had anything to do about it!

But then, a year ago, he'd crossed paths with his soulmate and everything had changed. He could still remember the terrible incident: the injured natuz charging out of the underbrush, its sharp horn gleaming with murderous intent as it charged the court doctor's back; Iorweth's realization that Cedrik Daniels—the court doctor and a good man who had faithfully served both him and his father for decades—was unaware of the impending doom; his desperate cry to warn the man before it was too late, with every fiber of his being pushing against the horrible curse inside him and, for the slightest of moments, succeeding; pain so horrible that it redefined agony, followed by blood and darkness.