A Crown Of Blades(ARTK, Book 3)

Chapter 104-105

Juhna 15th,3330 A.G

He wanted to walk right out of the sickroom and strangle her. It wouldn't be a difficult thing, he imagined. He possessed twice her physical strength, could hold up multiple of their children at the same time- but strength of the mind were a different story.

  He would not know where to start in explaining that to the younger ones, and they'd at least deserve a small one.

  Your mother was a cunt- no, that wouldn't work. He had spent decades loving her and loved her still. He did not believe anything could change that- unless she were to try something that there were truly no coming back from.

  She'd always carried a little anger.... And he'd always tried to understand. First it were the matter of her birth; she were older and her her brother had been heir to the throne. Then it were his death, and something snapped in her. She could have just as easily joined the ranks of those who believed Isolde were an unfit ruler, too young to call herself that even with a regent- yet she hadn't.

  She doubled down, stuck her loyalties to a child( and not her own, at that) and were currently sinking more and more with each passing day.

  Aalot walked past their youngest, Tillie's room- and paused for only a moment to listen in. She were still such a happy child, loved by each and every one of her wet nurses. He could not imagine doing what Millie had just done to Marriota- to any of their children.

  The smell..... he didn't believe he'd ever forget the smell or her screams. They hadn't stopped immediately after the eye were stabbed, though she'd looked like she were trying. They'd continued all the way to the sickroom, and inside of it while the witch cleaned and did everything else she needed to do. Aalot had been so focused on her cries, on the pain in his hand as she gripped it so tight he thought something were going to break at one point- then he'd help tuck her into a sickroom bed as he'd done when she were a child.

  If nothing else were going to do it, that had truly broken him.

  When he walked into he and Millie's chambers, rooms he'd always hated for being too large but tolerated because they were the ones she'd wanted- he halted about two steps into the door. Instead of visiting their daughter whom she'd inflicted pain on, Millie were sitting at her vanity table ( find more medievaly word) and allowing a handmaiden to redo her hair.

  If he had a single bit of patience left, he may have waited until she left the room. If he had a single bit of respect left, he may have even waited until she were long down the hallway.

  Instead he sat on the bed with his hands clasped and glared with so much hatred both could feel it and turned around.

Then she did something he would never forget; she had the audacity to smile at and speak softly with him.

  "I know that must have been... difficult to watch." She gulped. "The girl was always your favorite. I remember this time when she was really little-"

She could not bring herself to finish her sentence, for the way he were looking at her..... he'd never looked at her like that before. They'd had their arguments..... but from the moment of their marriage and long before that that it had always been love in those eyes.

  He had always loved her more than she loved him, but an imbalance were to be expected in any relationship between a commoner and noble born person. She did love him, that could not be denied. But he.....

  If she loved him more than he loved her, she weren't sure she could deal with that. It would take years of denial, and this weren't something he intended to let go by the look on his face-