A Terrible fate

Part 17

I didn't sleep that night. There were too many memories swimming through my head to do so.

I couldn't stop thinking about the small box hidden under my bed, the scraps and little keepsakes I had stolen away from my family. I wanted it, wanted to pull it out and look at all the little things as the moon streamed in through my window, clear and crisp in the cold night. I wanted to see them again.

My mind was running, unable to rest as I tried desperately to claw at the muddy visions of my uncles and cousins before they ran through my fingers like water, puddling beneath in a bloody red mess as the scene I recall turned back into that of the throne room.

I stared at the windows, the heavy damask curtains darkening the room and blocking any view of the night sky.

I wanted so badly to see them again. I wanted to be able to remember them without that horrific scene flashing to the forefront of my mind.

Something compelled me to sit myself up, it took so much effort. I had barely been moving on my own lately, Lionel was carrying me around and helping me sit and stacking mountains of pillows behind me to support my frail stature.

I had started to move around some, sitting up slowly and leaning heavily on cushions, but I had yet to be completely free with my movement since it all happened.

I had heard the maids whispering to each other that if I continued like this I would never be able to walk, run, or ride again.

I was so tired these past few months that I hadn't had the energy to even move on my own, not that I wanted to anyway. I had been locked away in my mind the whole time, my grief keeping me immobile and as unfeeling as possible.

Everything I had known had shattered around me into thousands of blood-stained pieces, and I had fallen apart right alongside it.

Lionel knew it, the chef knew it, the maids knew it, the stewards knew it, the king of Reobeth knew it, and the prince of Reobeth knew it too. They all had known, and I think I was just starting to understand just how much I had shattered with all that I had known.

I wanted to look out the window. I wanted to see the stars.

Father had loved the stars.

He had spent hours with my brother and me outside on clear nights, pointing out the different groups and naming them for us. Telling us the stories of how they were made, which gods hung them together, and what they were doing during the day.

He would sneak us out of our bedrooms, keeping us up far past our bedtimes and giggling behind our mother's back when his silver curls would bounce as we were all scolded for going out when it was far too dark.

My brother and I would make up stories for our constellations, pick out groups of stars without a name, without stories, and create our own for them.

I wanted to see them, the stars my father had spent the darkest evenings whispering to us about. The little cluster of stars just above the northernmost one that my brother and I had fought over for weeks. We both wanted to name it, but it was only one cluster.

It took too much effort for me to swing my legs over the edge of the bed, perhaps had I been in a clearer state of mind I would have seen this as the warning it was.

I went to plant my feet down on the plush carpet that served as a barrier between my bare feet and the freezing stone of the floors and scooched off the edge of the bed.

The mattress was a lot higher than I had thought it would be, but perhaps I never truly thought of it. The beds in my and my cousins' and brother's rooms were custom-made to our height and want. The ones in the guest rooms were generic ones meant for adults and were quite a bit higher than my own.

I had certainly thought, then, that the carpet was far softer than it felt when I landed heavily on my knees. A solid thump sounded from my crumpling fall. I had expected my body to work as it always did. To slip off the bed and land on sure feet and stand on my legs and then just walk over to the window to open the curtains and look out.

Instead, my knees had given out beneath me, and my feet never surely planted on the floor. I had landed instead in a small heap at the bedside.

It didn't hurt. It should have hurt.

But I suppose that after months of doing nothing, my body had grown used to the overwhelming numbness. And now any sensation felt magnified beyond my understanding.

What should have been a small bump, something that I should have been able to huff at and brush off, felt like a bolt of lightning going up both my legs.

They were stiff and tight and the pain of when I moved them and now landing on top of them seemed to flood into my senses out of nowhere.

I sat there for what felt like hours, in the room darkened to a nearly pitch black by the heavy curtains blocking my view of the stars.

It probably wasn't even a few moments, but it felt like days as I just sat there, crying blankly at the first feeling of sensation I could remember in my limbs.