For What is Bought in Blood

Grief, a Bridge Between Souls

The first raging storm of spring begins outside.

It is only right, on Hollie's last day of this world, that it would take a raging storm to take her soul home. Wherever that may be. The gentle buds of trees that have gently grown over the last week will be ripped from their limbs and discarded onto the ground and left to die. Freshly bloomed flowers will wither and die in the deep darkness of the clouds, even the promise of sunshine tomorrow not enough to keep them alive. Bees and grasshoppers will vacate from their safe home ranges into the wild unknown to escape the torrential rain just to end in the belly of something larger. Today, the day Hollie left the world, will end in the damnation of many innocents.

Maybe I could have been a poet if I had been born of other blood. My fury and sorrow could have been words on a page instead of daggers in flesh and muscle. Comfort could have come from a man with gentle hands and kind words, not finding the darkest corner to squeeze myself into, hoping the void will hold me back.

There is no anguish like this one. Even from the darkest corner I can see the table she would stack books on, adding bundles of romance atop my historical tomes. I can see the door that she would peek into to ensure the library was empty before I entered behind her. I can almost hear her laughter bouncing off the walls back at us before I shushed her and she resigned to laughing into her hands.

Unlike anger that parades through the mind, jostling memories and igniting old sentiments, sadness forces you into silence. You have to choose to feel or you will be forced into your subconscious, barely aware and hardly living.

I'm not sure what Hollie's plan was. What would she have done if she was successful? Arithia was not always confined to one family line- generations ago heirs would be thrust into battle, forced to kill one another for the throne. It was a show of power and superiority to best an heir. My father's line came into power by killing the king himself. Would it have become me grappling for the throne against the same Lords that tried to seduce me? Would the throne be Ervan's, the Queens consort?

Maybe Hollie believed it would be simple then, that I would take the throne and all would be rightened. With the wedding only days away, maybe she was trying to spare me from a loveless future?

With the back of my head nestled in a joining of walls, I bring my knees to my chest. I wrap my arms around myself and settle deep into the sound of the rain against the windows, darkness long fallen outside. I couldn't bear to leave the throne room until they took Hollie away. I stood on the bottom step until my knees gave out and I crashed to the floor, not caring about the searing pain it shot up my spine. The girl who had patched my wounds, held me after my father died, and put joy into my life, was gone.

Mother and Ervan had breezed out quickly, but the guards gave pause. I was well aware of my sobbing, my screams, but no one else moved. They stood around her form in solace until the sun began to set.

Somehow my soulless form wandered here where I knew no one would look for me. I need to tell Morelin, tell him that an important part of our plans and my life has been displaced. But there's no one to smuggle my letter.

The heavy main door of the library peeks open somewhere behind me. No light accompanies the noise, and I breathe in one more deep breath before he sees me.

"Alula," Terran breathes, a note of relief in his voice. He stands to my left, having just spied my fallen form around a row of shelves. He has changed, no note of Hollie's death blow on his clothes. He is unarmed and anxious, not bothering to fully button his clean shirt before rushing out to find me.