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ELENARA. Am I no good? (prologue)
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"Lady Elenara, your husband has requested your presence."
I sighed, my prayers being interrupted at the same time as yesterday and the day before, and the day before that again. "What for, today?" I would have a hard time disguising my exasperation, the colors it took on veiled my face with anger.
"I did not ask, my lady."
I was afraid my sighs would become my prayers much to my husband's delight. I was afraid the Gods would stop listening, if they had ever. Perhaps my words were not enough. Perhaps I had to engrave them in the stone with my bare hands until they reached the opposite of the sky, where the children of the Gods rested beneath the earth.
"I am trying to make them hear me, why are they not answering?"
I needed them. I belonged to them. They had taken my soul a long time ago and they were not returning it, instead I had been left with something rotting under my skin.
"Mayhaps the silence is an answer, my lady."
They could keep their silence. I did not wish for it and yet I had no choice but to accept it, for they forced it to carve a path down my throat, stealing my very words. Was it them, or was it my husband? I could no longer be certain. But what I knew beyond doubt was that my time was running out. To save the scattered remnants of my soul. To save my life from the future I had inflicted on myself.
I had always longed to be a wife. I had always longed to be someone's woman. Loved. Protected. Worshipped. Until I became one.
Foolish dreams. Foolish, foolish dreams. The Gods had tried to warn me, in vain. My first fiancé met a grim fate in a royal joust. The second choked on too much pie during our introductions. The third—his fate, I could almost laugh at it, were my heart open to joy. The Gods had sent me signs I ought to have heeded instead of stubbornly following my own will. Thus, their silence was a punishment.
"My lady, we should go to him. He waits. You know he does not like to be kept waiting."
If I was not a wife, what could I hope to become? I had no talent, no passion, no taste for poetry, and the steel of swords poisoned my hands as much as the needles of embroidery. I was merely a name in a body that knew not how to navigate the world. I was but the ghost of what I might have been. At least ghosts could pass through walls and be the tormentors rather than the tormented. I had no such luck.
"I do not appreciate my prayers being interrupted, yet they are. Do you not serve me as well?"
He was not comfortable. He served me but my husband frightened him and fear overrode his sense of duty. "I am your humble servant, lady." Fear could do a lot of things to someone's mind. I refused to be the prisoner of terror in addition to being that of a man.
I rose from my prayers, letting my supplications fade into the dust of the walls. It was no longer useful, my Gods had dropped their brushes of destiny into my colorless canvas. If I could no longer ask them, no, beg them to take my husband back then I had to send him to them myself.
"I owe you the truth, my lady, for I have failed in my duty to you. The men are going to war. Your husband, he does not wish to sacrifice his own soldiers, it is yours he intends to offer as fodder for the dragons. Those of your house."
He wanted the men of Riversblood? The bastard would have me instead.
"Fergis?" I addressed the man who now wrung his hands, succumbing to his nerves as I watched. "You shall prepare my horse."
author's notes/ i hope the prologue made sense as i feel my english is not really englishing (i fear i will always have a french writing style) elenaras terrible marriage will be more explained as the story progresses, thank you all for reading!!
