A Dance Of Crowns & Thrones | Book I

Chapter 59 | Night-time | When We Were Children

We are not haunted by the dead.

We are haunted by the living and the graveyard of memories they leave in our heads.

"Be safe little one, don't go giving your mother a hard time," were the last words she had ever heard him say. Her father's voice was embedded into her mind, and while she had been barely seven at the time, she was also a fragment of the person she was about to become.

"Papa," young Sera reached her father, "give me a big, bigggggg hug!"

"My little ladybug," he offered, chuckling, and wrapping his strong arms around her tiny body, he kissed her one last time on her forehead.

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Eko rolled over in her sleep; eyebrows furrowed as sweat poured across her forehead.

The funeral had left her reeling, she had not dreamt of her father in years, yet the memories were as vivid as she thought a memory could be.

It also spiralled her next memory, the night she remembered when her father's body returned home to them with her brother.

Young Eko followed the trailing desperate form of her mother that burst into the grand halls.

She watched as her mother's trembling body fell desperately to her knees, elicited by a long wrenching cry that echoed through the palace walls. She had then thrown herself over the bodies of a burnt and disfigured man and child that had been brought back home to them.

A servant caught her and covered her sight, but she could hear her mother's cry. She could hear the cries long after she was torn from the sight of her father and brothers' unrecognizable bodies.

---- ----

Beaded with sweat and anxiety gripping her heart, Eko snapped awake as the room's darkness consumed her. Looking down at the small gadget of a bracelet around her wrist, she flicked over the command on the object, and her brunette now replaced her blonde hair.

It sat across her chest as she delicately picked up some of the strands and twirled her golden locks around her fingers in deep thought.

Madison stirred, and it caused Eko to flip the gadget back to its setting; instantly, her brunette hair consumed her once again. Getting up, she stretched from the bed and knew the best way to fight this feeling of nostalgia was to train and have her mind focus on something else rather than those memories.

She looked over to the clock; it was just after four in the morning, and it would be deathly quiet at this time for training. Grabbing her clothes and changing, Eko headed out of the infirmary and made her way along the quietness of the world of Allegiant towards the Training arena.

Upon arriving at the level, she was immersed in her thoughts; and didn't expect to run into the one person that made her forget her entire world existed.

"And what are you doing up so early?" Matthew's voice echoed around her, causing Eko to snap up to the man with a magnetic smile plastered on his face.

Knowing that no one was around, he stepped towards the woman; grabbing her hand, he pulled her in as he brushed her chin with the pad of his thumb. "Can't sleep?"

Eko shook her head, "bad dream," she offered the truth, and to her surprise, she felt his hand cup her cheek now. The other pushed back a strand of hair behind her ear, and his steel eyes studied her features, noticing that she relaxed with him.

"Can I ask you something?" she was more serious this time; his attention bounced between his own as he nodded. "How did your parents die?"

It wasn't the question Matthew thought she would ask, but he obliged nonetheless with his answer. "Burnt alive in our home. Ezra and her forces burnt it to the ground. Most of the people were in the area where we lived. You?"