When Blindfolds Fall

24: Do You Love Me Eternally?

"What am I marrying?! Am I marrying a wife or a husband?!"

The words still echoed inside the ambassador's mind and pushed out even more tears from his eyes.

He couldn't believe it, he was in awe and so deeply hurt he couldn't find a way to stop crying. That was why he took the first carriage out of Koeur-Krown bound to the capital.

Seeing the way Viktor was trying to find evidence of Josiah's wrong gender in him felt like he was being skinned alive. Stripped of the respect he deserved as a person.

What hurt more is that Viktor never doubted Josiah's gender until now. It wasn't until he saw that portrait and he got unnecessarily curious, that everything crashed and burned.

Josiah always suspected a day would come where someone important to him, like Beth for example, would see that picture and realize that that baby girl was indeed his wrong body.

He never had the heart to take it down though, it was the only portrait of him as a baby with his mother. In the next one, he was already 112 years old with Beth born and his mother gone.

She was the only one that ever knew before his efforts at transitioning took place. For that, Josiah suffered worse than everyone else in the manor the loss of his mother.

"Jocelyn," The ambassador heard his mother's words as he recalled a vivid memory.

"Yes, mum?" Six year old Josiah replied to her.

"How do you feel, sweetheart? Has anything bothered you?"

"No mum, I feel happy."

Josiah shut his eyes and sobbed quietly as he remembered the face his mother made then. She gave him that beautiful, soft, motherly smile and crouched to his height. The way the ghost of her fingertips felt on his cheek, like a rose petal's graze, stung now.

"Do you feel happy when I call you my daughter?" Elizabeth asked calmly and Josiah recalled that feeling of nervousness filling him again as if he was reliving it. "Or do you wish I called you my son?"

He had no sense of politics, and no notion that being transgender wasn't always accepted by others. For Josiah's young self, it was an honest question, so he gave an honest answer.

"Yes. I wish everyone would tell me I'm a boy." Josiah had whispered. "I am a boy, but . . . I don't know why people say I'm a girl. I want to be your son mum."

"My boy, you will have to forgive me and your father then." Elizabeth smiled tearfully. "We made that mistake, but we won't anymore, and everyone will know you are our little boy, Josiah."

That was the first time Josiah ever heard his name and felt a sense of peace and acceptance envelop him. It was as warm as the embrace his mother gave him.

Unfortunately for the ambassador, he kept remembering Viktor's scorn towards him. It still made him break down into sobs and bump his forehead against the window of the carriage.

Why did it matter now? Why was a paper's testimony worthier than Josiah's word?

Tonight was supposed to be the happiest day of his life, but so far, it was the worst one. Alas, in a matter of hours, Josiah was to marry Viktor.

Arriving to the castle and seeing the servants bustling around and rushing to prepare everything for their wedding pierced his heart. They would be getting married over Kiyamond Cliff, one of the most romantic places in Lamia, but he couldn't be happy about it.