When a Stars Teardrops Become Jewels: Eclipsed Garden

| 6 | Moonlight on a Dark Night

"Why did he suddenly decide to make me a prince?" Alta asked while facing his full-body reflection. Rhys gave him a look of complaint from behind the mirror. He changed the wording of his question, "Make us princes?"

After the party had ended at exactly noon, Alta, his mother and younger brother had been swept away by a swarm of servants and separated from each other to be led to their respective rooms to get prepared for the Bonding Ceremony. Being half-guided and half-dragged through the confusing interwoven halls of the Emerald Castle, he was brought to what he was told would be his new bedchambers. To Alta, however, the two kingsguard that stood outside his room had opened the dark-wood doors to an entire new world.

His new chambers had not just one room, but four separate rooms. Each room decorated to fulfill its own purpose and theme. The first room that he walked into was wide open to the outside with windows that rose from the floor to the ceiling. Only a single step separated the inside carpet of the room from the outside stone of the balcony. The light scent of fresh flowers wafted through the air, tickling Alta's nose as he was moved through the common room quickly. He was taken behind a thick green-black curtain to a room beyond that had a more intimate setting. Except for a bed twice or thrice the size of Master Orion's. It was immaculately made, without a single wrinkle in the white sheets they had placed in preparation for his arrival. A transparent veiled canopy surrounded three of the four sides of the bed and was pitched up to the ceiling like a tent. He tried to take a further look but was pushed into another room with abath adjacent to the bedroom. 

It was there he bathed himself, alone, much to the dismay of the servants that had been adamant about helping him. After soaking in the warm milky water for ten minutes, he was intruded on and informed his mother and brother were in the common area of his chambers awaiting his arrival. 

No sooner had he taken a single step into the common room and said a single syllable of greeting to his mother than he had been whisked to a nearby mirror and shrouded in several layers of clothes that the King had chosen for him. An older woman pulled his arm through a sleeve while another tied a blue sash around his waist. Afterwards the same pair spent an hour tugging and infusing scented oil onto his hair. Now he stood, completed in his ensemble with a matching cobalt cape that reached to the bottom of his spine. 

Sometime in the middle of the rushed styling, Master Orion had joined the family in the room and sat in a chair in the far back corner where he could watch, quiet and undetected. It was only when Alta spotted his reflection in the mirror and asked his question that Orion spoke up.

"I do not have the luxury to guess what the King is thinking. Perhaps the queen would have a better idea?"

Carina shook her head, the crown perched on it sparkling in the evening light as she moved. She and Rhys were sitting side-by-side on a chaise near the center of the room. 

"I doubted for the longest time that the King, your father," She said, running her hand down the back of Rhys's hair. She pulled out a loose strand and started to braid it. "Ever had true feelings for me. After I gave birth to you, Alta, he did not come to see me even once for seven years except for a single night. It was that night he took you from me, claiming that you would be safer and without want for anything but your mother."

From remembering the past her eyes had become moist, but she did not dare let a tear loose down her cheeks. Instead, she finished the small braid in Rhys's hair and patted it down with gentle fingers before continuing the story.

"After I gave birth to Rhys some months later, Rune- he started to visit me once a year every year in secret. You never knew about it, Rhys, because I always sent you off to stay with the Smiths for the night. This past year he visited me one starlit, and he told me that things would soon change. The next day, he sent Prince Asterlos to the ruins of Lumos to war with the invading Merlanders." 

"You never told me about this." Alta said to his mother.

Carina smiled, as soft and encouraging as her smiles always were. Like coming home after a long winter or a shining moon on a dark night.

"I did not have the heart to tell you." She said, "Nor the time. You were in the Temple, an apprentice to the Master of Garden at 7-years-old. Thriving in your life away from me. I couldn't keep you from that." 

"You never told me." Rhys echoed; his expression as serious as his childish face would allow.

"You never asked." 

"Why did he choose now to reclaim us?" Alta asked, turning his back to the mirror and facing the room. This time it was Orion who answered. 

"Why does a King send his then only viable heir into a war he might die in?" He asked. Orion's questionable answer only confused Alta further. "It could have been to make up for old grievances, to ensure the future of his kingdom, or a simple whim on behalf of his covertly romantic nature. We need not know the truth now, only to live long enough to see it in the aftermath." 

"I don't understand." Alta rubbed his thumb against the stone of his necklace which he had convinced the chambermaids to let him keep it on since it did not clash with the blue colour of his outfit. His head started throbbing from all of his swirling thoughts as they collided into each another and combined to create more contorted ideas of his and his families' lives. Adding his master's philosophical scenario to the mess made Alta feel like his skull was about to crack. 

"Whathe means to say is that we should not focus on what has happened in the pastand only to what is happening now, to the current us." Carina said as she stood up. 

The skirt of her dress that had been pulled up while sitting on the chaise spilled to the floor. Crown atop her head and standing with a straight back in regal purple, Alta's mother looked every centimeter a queen. Despite being told not to focus on the past, her gentle smile and strong brown eyes eased his heart as he was reminded of the things that would never change.