Crowned Prince | hendery

33: Interrupted

“Taeha.” This was the tenth time Hendery had called out her name as they returned to the base.

The travel hurt her body. If she was all honest, she was not used to riding a horse for that long. She expected a carriage, but she admits that even that was too much for a prince stuck in the middle of a war trying to reclaim the land of his mother. She endured it thinking of the people that needed her rehabilitation the most, especially those behind Hendery’s protection.

However, in the tent the two newlyweds shared, the prince was on his knees waiting for a response from the princess.

“Taeha, I am no fool. You are awake.” Hendery finally gives up and sits at the side of the bed where her back was turned against.

Even as his thighs hit her back there was no response.
“What is it that might have caused your frustrations?”

“You.”

Hendery leans in closer not hearing what the princess has muffled into her pillow– or makeshift pillow. As she found out recently that an attack on the base caused Hendery to lose a lot of his basic stuff– losing several items of clothing and his sleeping area due to the opposing side burning them down.

“I did not hear.”

Taeha sighs and finally turns around.

“What has soured your mood?” Hendery puts his hands over at the other side of the bed trapping Taeha beneath his arms as he leans in closer.

Taeha sighs as the innumerable times she did just from the person leaning over her now. She crosses her arms over her chest. “You threw me back to my family. Then you come in pretending as if nothing had happened.”

Taeha sits up and moves back.

“Nothing–”

“Then you come and tell me that you love me?”

Hendery’s ears turn red. “I did not–”

“Is it not the same? My life and my breath? Do you not know what my brother calls his wife?” Taeha looks at Hendery whose eyes had already turned the other head. His hands remain in the same position as if he was conflicted. “Vita.”

Hendery was quiet.

“I had asked him once when I was much younger, why he had called her Vita– his vita.”

Taeha couldn’t understand why she was getting all worked up about something so trivial. She should not be moving her arms around haphazardly trying to explain her frustration but she was.

“Have you any idea what he told me?”

Hendery’s silence was so still that it was only making her blood boil even more.

“That it is her– that she is his life. The sole reason he breathes and pursues every morning. The sole reason he awakens and greets every morning with a smile. The sole reason he remains to live and be alive, just as if she was the air he was breathing. She was the blood pumping through his veins, she was his life.”

Hendery was now picking on the edge of his calluses– the one’s on his hand.

“And for what reason does one declare that they are their life?”

Still silent.

Taeha could no longer understand the silence. She moves her legs out beneath him and dangles it over her head. She walked away from the small bed– that they would inevitably share for the night.

“You know how I feel.” Hendery spoke his eyes not leaving his hands that were still picking on his calluses.

“And?”

Hendery sighs, finally lifting his head. “This is not the time nor place that I wish to convey them.”

Taeha stops before sighing and looking over at him. Turning her body around, her hair that was let loose follows her turn. “Hendery,” she walks up to him, her legs touching his knees, “you–” she pauses– “we’re in the middle of a war, we may be prioritized to survive, but that has never guaranteed our tomorrow.”

“Even if we were behind the safety of your castle, of your country or your town, there was no guarantee that you would not live tomorrow. What is it that you want to tell me?”

Hendery shakes his head.

“Then shall I begin with mine?”

Hendery stops shaking his head and stares at her directly. As if all that echoed in his head was her voice. As if the large tent was not even enough to hold in the thoughts that were running through his mind– mostly of her. She sounded confident, but her lips were shaking and she was hesitating, Hendery could see it all.

“Taeha-”

“Hendery, I–”

“It is you.”

It was ironic how the first thing he would notice about her was her reluctance to tell him, but he could not even utter what she wanted to hear– what he wanted to truly tell her.

“It is you. You are the reason I keep on breathing, the sunlight that cures upon my darkness and the being that controls my very being. Yet I have disappointed you.” Hendery takes a deep breath in.

“Disappoi–”

“You have dreamt of a simpler life, that you would be detached from noble responsibilities. I cannot give you what I had promised, in fact I did not simply disappoint you, I have gotten you further into the trap. I have broken our promise— the life you have dreamed of is now further from your grasp all because I am the son of my mother—"

"And for that I am thankful." Taeha was the first to initiate contact as she grabbed his hand. "Do you not understand that it is the fact that you cannot turn your head away from the struggle the people of your mother's land is facing is why I cannot sit idly by and watch you take all of them on your shoulder. Every waking day as I assisted the people left behind by war it was you that kept me going, the thought that even if you do not desire your position you hold your head up and accept your responsibilities."

Hendery's hands were shaking as his eyes darted between hers.

"You are most appealing in front of the people that sing about your praises. That is what I lo—"

They hear the heavy fabric of the tent that they shared rattle. Both their heads turn to the entrance of the tent with their hands both holding onto each other as Illia stands there catching his breath. "You must take shelter."

Then they hear the numerous feet running and shouts echo outside the tent. There was stumbling so close to their tent that the two of them could feel the earth beneath their feet shake. Hendery takes a step forward but keeps one of his hands with hers. "Did we not station guards for the night?"

"It appears they have been using surprise tactics and attacked those men first silently." The count shakes his head. "Now is not the time for explanations, your highness, the two of you must flee."

"And allow my men to die?"

"Your life is much more—"

"I would rather that you flee, you have a family waiting I cannot forgive myself if they grow up without a father." Hendery sighs before turning to Taeha. "You must run with Illia."

"Your highness?" "What?" The two echo their confusions.

"There is no time to explain." Hendery guides Taeha beside Illia. "Meet me by the mountainside at sunrise if I do not return—" he places both his hands on each of Taeha and Illia's shoulders— "then you may come and save me."

Taeha and Illia were no stranger to Hendery's hatred of the throne of his responsibilities but he has never acted on his hate, yet this is the first time that they both feel his hands shake and his eyes boring onto the two of them as if it was clear at that very moment that he was just as human as they were— scared of his own death.