This Is What It's Like To Be Lovers [ON HOLD]

14: I'll Wait Forever

• My Old Story by IU •

Jade sighed, turning. Coming from behind the staircase was a chair with wheels, and sitting in it was the woman who the Queen thought was far more worthy than herself to run the kingdom of Jahima.

It was in her blood, after all.

"I thought I heard you," she said, turning the wheels to proceed towards the siblings. A figure ran past them to assist her - the fiesty teenager with the buckets. "Thank you, Onika," Peri raised a defending arm. "But I can manage. Please tend to the Queen."

"The Queen?" Onika turned from Peri to Jade, her face now uncovered, and went red. She covered her face with her hands and bent her head in front of the monarch. "I'm sorry for-" she started to say but Jade stopped her.

"It just means my disguise was perfect. Anyway, it'd be great, Onika, if you could.." Jade raised a finger to her lips.

"Of course." The girl bowed again, before leaving.

Jade had now shifted her whole concentration to the woman in the chair. She looked well slept, for the early hour that it was, and healthy. Her black hair was shining, her dark skin was glowing, and her blue irises were curious and wide. "You were saying?" Peri transferred her fingers from the wheels to the edge of the table, and urged her friend on with a soft smile.

"You were right," Jasper started for his sister. "The note didn't come from Jadie."

"Just as I thought," Peri conjectured, leaning back into her chair. "And what exactly happened?"

Queen Jade took a deep breath and started to narrate the happenings since the day she left Jahima with Sillia and the soldiers she thought were on her side. Maw brought them food, while Onika made sure the front and back doors were bolted so nothing would disturb them.

The redhead queen spoke of the High Princess in detail - a speech that garnered many sideway glances between Jasper and Peri. When she finished, she still had no idea about the future, about where to take Lari from Kalk. She didn't know if she even wanted to go anywhere from there, or if she had had enough adventure for the last two weeks and just wanted to go home.

"If Princess Larimar wants to return home," she stated. "And if her instinct tells her to give me away, I'd let it happen."

"What the actual fuck?" Peri questioned. "You're willing to give up everything for the fucker's daughter?"

"Peri, don't forget.."

"Yes, I know," the noirette thumped her fist on the table. If she could, she would have stood up to make the point. "I know," she repeated. "I'm not very fond of the fact, you know that. And I'm not really asking you to get beheaded for me."

"She isn't either," Jade gulped, and her brother could almost hear it. He pushed the glass of water towards her, but she shook her head. "And.." she looked up at him, and then at their father, and then at their friend. "What's there to give up?"

"What about us?" Jasper asked. "The people of Jahima? You'd be giving up the realm, Jadie."

"Sillia made sure of that happening when she betrayed me." Jade bit her lip. "And, if you ask about avenging the dead, I.. never intended to kill Laz. I just wanted to defeat him and dethrone him. There's no way that's happening anymore. Even if the Princess doesn't rat me out, someday I'll be caught. How long will I be in hiding? On the run? That too, with the Princess with me?"

So we'll have to find a way, Jade could almost hear the words. A voice she didn't remember anymore.

"So we'll have to find a way," Jasper said them out loud. "That's what Mama would want us to do. She wouldn't have wanted you to give up."