A Terrible fate

Part 19

How would he have reacted? If our roles were reversed?

If he was the one who had stayed in our shared bedroom, if he had insisted on finishing the book he was so close to being done with. If he was the one our mother had come running for if he was the one who had survived his attack. If he was the one who ran from our bedroom, into the throne room, to see our family lying dead and dying in their blood.

Would he have done what I did? Would he have been able to live?

I mean truly live.

I may have been alive but I was nothing but a living dead at this point, I had been nothing but a body without a soul. My grief had destroyed me, consumed me, and left me shattered.

And I had left it.

Would he have?

Would he have even made it out of that throne room alive? If he hadn't killed our grandfather would I have? Or would he have had me killed, his second in command had been cut down before he was. If I had entered and they were still alive would I be dead?

Would Lionel have been able to save me?

Would my brother need saving?

Or would he have run into that room, desperate to see what had caused our mother such pain? Would he have to see the horror that I saw? Would he have picked up our father's sword and done as he did, would he have lived if Sir Lionel had been right behind him?

Would our mother have been able to try to kill him? Or would he step aside and stop him? Would our beloved mother have been able to kill himself?

If my brother had been the one to stay behind would he have been able to live? Would his anger drive him? Would he have some of our family left with him?

I know what would have happened if I had been in the throne room that day instead. I would have died. I would have been cut down first.

Lionel had tried his best to keep what happened that day from me, but my uncle had told him and I had overheard him telling someone else what he had been told.

My uncle Kuro, his dark dark eyes, had been barely alive when I burst into the throne room. He had watched silently, trying to drag himself over to me as I threw myself over my father. His best friend, the man who had saved his life, the one who had given him a chance to begin again, lay dead in a puddle of his blood and his last living child was thrown over him sobbing and pulling at him.

Kuro had been an Asian for a rival kingdom. Raised by his family, his father -who was my grandfather's second in command- had ensured he was well trained. He was barely older than I am now when he was sent out on his first mission, to kill someone he didn't know, didn't want to know.

He was nearly sixteen when he came across my father, his next target. My eldest uncle, Andranik, and the triplet's father, Uncle Ashur Jad barely managed to take him down. The two of them had been heavily cut and bleeding out when my father came across them. He offered Kuro a deal, freedom to start anew to be his person, or imprisonment.

Kuro had taken the deal.

And his father went with him. It wasn't until my brother and I were eight that Kali's younger half-brother, through his mother, had come across him again. He was older than my brother and I by four years, barely twelve when he was sent to kill his half-brother and the "traitors" father.

Kiichi was a strong boy, with black eyes like his older brother and skilled with every weapon he had ever laid his hands on. He and Uncle Kuro had been prodigies in the world of killing and shadows. A world they had both left behind.

If anyone asked, Kiichi was Uncle Kuro's son by a mistress who had passed away, leaving the mysterious boy with his father.

He had been very happy to stay with us, Kiichi. He and Andranik got along very well, the two eldest of the cousins. Best suited to guide and protect us, constantly hovering around us and playing little tricks on us.

Kiichi was the more troublesome of the two of them, he loved to play pranks on the younger of us. Andranik was constantly scolding him for it, but it was always good fun and no one ever got hurt from them.

Kiichi had been lying at the base of the stairs that led up to the throne, My grandfather's second-in-command underneath him. Kiichi's pink hands wrapped around the knife that was buried in his chest, the elder's hand on the ground, a knife covered in the blood that spilled from Kiichi's throat not far from him.

Two assassins killing each other, one for king and country, the other for the family that had taken him in.

A child murdered by a man meant to protect him and raise him, his elder brother lying not far behind him, having slaughtered my grandfather's guards before he was taken down.

Lionel had tried his best to keep what happened that day from me, but my uncle had told him and I had overheard him telling someone else what he had been told.

My uncle Kuro, his dark dark eyes, had been barely alive when I burst into the throne room. Sir Lionel had knelt by his side, trying to administer some first aid until the field doctors came in. He had been pushed away as my uncle tried to get to his feet, to his knees, to me.

He could not, so he did what little else he could. He told Lionel all that had happened in that throne room that dreadful day. How every one of my uncles and cousins had died. How my father had been killed, how my brother had been beheaded, how my mother barely managed to escape to go to me.

Lionel had told this to another knight, word for word, before his fellow man of the fellowship of the Reobeth king had gone to return to the court with all the news.

My body shivered again. Was it from the cold? Or was my body trying to save me from falling into the pits of my mind again? After finally doing something, moving my limbs after months of near nothing, after finally feeling sensation again, was it unwilling to let me fall back into the abyss of my memory?

I looked at the window again. If I kept sitting here doing nothing then it would be day and the stars wouldn't be here anymore. They would have gone down with the moon and I wouldn't be able to see them again, not until another night.

And who knew if I would be able to bring myself to do this again?

I brought my hands back down onto the floor after wiping away the salty trails of my tears with the edges of my nightgown sleeves. I clawed at the thick carpet that covered the cold stone and dragged myself forward.

As I pulled with my hands, arms trembling from the effort and my knuckles turning white from the tightness of my grip, my feet scrambled against the floor, trying to push along with my pulls.

Slowly along the carpet, I dragged myself. I didn't feel much, I just felt tired. My bones felt like they were shaking and all I wished to do was to lie down and sleep on the rug. But I was close, so close to the curtains.

I was at the rigs edge now, a smooth expanse of stone that seemed far wider than it truly lay between me and the curtains that kissed the floor. My legs seemed to be working a bit more now, I was able to pull myself back into a kneel after my feet pushed a bit more on the rug. I could almost reach the curtains if I just stretched out on the floor if I reached across the stone.

So I did. I pushed against the stone of the floor with my hands, slithering forward like one of the snakes that Hannan and Amal would find and let slip around their fingers in the garden.

My feet stuttered about trying to find some purchase on the carpet, trying to push me that one bit more forward. My arms stretched out in front of me when I felt that my hands wouldn't help move me forward anymore, my fingers going taught as they reached.

I tried, holding my breath as I nudged myself that little bit closer until I felt a brush of damask nudge my fingertips.