KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Thirty Nine

From the second floor window of her room, Charissa watched the scattered clouds sailing north and homeward.  She would have gladly traded her life with any of the birds drifting effortlessly through the sky.  She sat so long and so silently that Sphal, her guard felt compelled to repeatedly check her room to ensure she hadn't somehow escaped.  He seemed to have taken Amantis' threat to put his head on a pole to heart.

The door opened quietly behind her.  From the corner of her eye, she watched him poke his head in, start to withdraw, then as if changing his mind he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.  She ignored him as he stood watching one of his own feet twisting nervously before taking a steadying breath.

"Mahd, is something wrong?"

Charissa didn't reply.  How could she?  She wouldn't know where to begin.

"Are you ill?  Do you need anything?"

I'm dying, she thought, but said nothing as she faced the man, noting the pained frown on his earnest young face.  The young man was not like Amantis' usual brutish thugs.  He had a gentle spirit about him that seemed to belie any soreav training he might have suffered and, though a few years her junior, a handsome boy-next-door sort of charm.  "No.  I am well enough.  I lack for nothing—-at least nothing you could give me."

"I only ask because, well, I see you every day and I can't help but notice how sad you seem.  I ask myself why, and I think it must be that you are ill, for why would a lady so beautiful be so sad when she has such a beautiful baby and a beautiful house and a distinguished husband—-"

"Ha!" Charissa let out a single burst of bitter laughter.  "I have no husband."

"No husband?  But the oracle—"

"Is my keeper, nothing more."

That handsome furrowed brow rose in confusion.  "Were you not wed?"

"There was a ceremony—-a mockery of a wedding—-but Amantis is only wed to his stone and his power.  He doesn't know what it means to be a husband."

Sphal's brow clouded over in sympathetic anger and he took a step closer.  "Then the oracle is a very great fool.  I may never have taken a wife, but I would know how to treat such a beautiful woman."

Something lurched in Charissa's chest that hadn't moved in years.  "I take it you would do things differently?" she said.

Sphal started to raise his arms and for one terrifying moment, she thought he might embrace her before he seemed to check himself.  Her heart pounded frantically and the room seemed to grow dim.

"Had I taken a woman such as you to wife, I would make it my life's purpose to see you begin each day with a smile.  I would kiss away any tear or frown that might threaten to cloud your beauty and I would bask every evening in your radiance."

Charissa tried to utter a skeptical laugh, but it caught in her throat and came out more of a sob.  She turned her back to him and squeezed her eyes shut, willing the tears not to come.  Part of her waited in breathless anticipation, hoping he would take her in his arms, but in the empty stillness between thought and action, the door flew open and the stench of Apaidia's rich perfume wafted in.

"Move aside oaf!  You won't be needed in here.  Wait in the hall.  You shouldn't allow her to trick you!"

Charissa's cheeks, which had blushed warmly, suddenly chilled to an icy frostiness.  Her heart contracted into a stone as it sank into her chest and she let out a weary sigh.  "What are you doing here Apaidia?  I don't believe I sent for you."

 "No, Mahd," she smiled widely with a false cheeriness.  "Your husband," here she lingered on the word as if rubbing in the well-known fact that she was sleeping with him, "has asked that Garanth be prepared for dinner."