Penance of Honor | BOOK 2 ✔️

Chapter: Three

Stevens' P.O.V

I walk over to Analia slumped to the side of a table ignoring the lewd jokes being thrown at her from the Easterners. She continues to swirl around her cup filled with alcohol not bothering to look up, even when she knows I'm near. I know she is still upset with how things turned out, but I told her things would get better. No one believes me, not even my king.

With a gradual pace, I make my way over to her and plop down onto the seat across from her silencing the loud weres a couple tables away. Everyday I question how Pierce could have ever come from such things. All they are, are nothing but undomesticated animals, with little common sense.

"Analia," I whisper which makes her grip her cup tighter.

"Stop this drinking. What is done, is done."

"He will not ever forgive me for what I had done." Her voice is shaky and her lips clammy. The skin that once glowed with the hue of the sun now lays dry and stagnant like clouds blocking the rays of light. I knew then she had not been eating well and she was depressed just as I had seen Tristan. My lips purse at the thought of him and soon my eyes narrow before tears could swell into my own.

"He will never forgive me," she sobs. "What I had done...to him and his mate... he will never forgive me for the disloyalty I had shown him."

"You had nothing to do with what had happened to Pierce. He knows that," I murmur. I put my hand on top of hers and show her a gentle smile. "Stop this self torture now. Do not make him lose another person so near him. He will not be able to handle it."

"I had everything to do with Grimm and Addelin! Goddess, he's lost everyone because of me!"

My eyes fall and soon I notice how quiet it had become at her utterance. "He still has me. He still has you."

"And now he may marry the very man who had ordered hundreds of our people to be killed. Where is the Goddess' help? Where is she in everything? I cannot see him suffer like this. If I could atone for what I had done...If I could pay his penance..." I watch the tears flood from her eyes puffy with old tears.

"Hush. I know our king is suffering immensely and I cannot see him marry that kind of man either. Soon, after his emotions has settled, he will look for comfort to fill that void he feels inside." Her lips part."I very well know the feeling because he had given it to me."

"...Stevens..."

"I had loved him then and I still love him now. I want to see and hear that smile and laughter that warmed my heart for years again. But I will not see him fall into the arms of our enemy as the price." Her brown eyes stares into mine as she nods in agreement.

"We must find Pierce and we must bring him back."

"He may be dead, Stevens. He was gravely injured-"

"He is an Easterner. They do not die as easily as the rest of us," I state matter-of-factly. "He loved our king and our king loved him deeply. He was chosen...by the Goddess herself...which makes him our king as well..."I murmur with a bitter taste lodged in my throat.

I grab her arm and start pulling her around the table as I get up. Soon, I have her walking out the door as I bring her closer to me. "For months I had thought on this and the only way to know whether he is alive or dead is to get captured and brought to the humans in the South."

"Stevens!"

"Sh!"

"I cannot leave Our Grace. However, you can." Her eyes were wide then filled with fear and some sense of hope.