Invisible

Chapter 24

Chapter 24:

"Sister?" he asked in a shock.

"Don't believe her." Queen Kate said in fright.

"Silence." He yelled at her. "You're Isabella?" the shock was written all over his beautiful features, his stare gaping and trying to recall if it was really me standing in front of him.

"Yes, My Lord, it's me." Somehow, the smile found its way to my lips as I learned that he still remembered me since we were only six and nine, remembered who I was if not how I looked like.

"Oh, Heavens! I can't believe this! She told us that you had died, she told us that the one with her was her handmaid!" his hands came to his hair and he gripped it, he really didn't believe what he was hearing.

Who would? My sister took everything away from me. On my wedding day no less. Our mother died while giving birth to her, and I was the one responsible for her when I was only seven years old.

Our father became very sick as the days passed, and he wasn't well enough to give me away to my husband. I was always inside our house, days far from the castle, barely ever got out or met anyone – after all, I was the one promised to Prince Edward at time, and I was well sheltered.

On my wedding day, my sister started her lies, she told them that she was the younger sister and next to marry King Edward, and that her older sister Isabella had died. King Edward could do nothing but accept what she told him; his father had given his word to our father to marry his daughter after all.

When I tried to talk, Kate told me that she had prepared everything to have our father killed if I spoke a word, and so I didn't. She taught me to call her My Queen, and beat me until I learned to never disobey. Kate only ever loved herself, hated me all of her life for being the promised Queen, and I didn't put it behind her to kill our own father to get to what she wanted.

I'd watched King Edward grieve over my death for weeks while I lived and was just steps close. She always told me to bow my head whenever he was there; he had never seen my face before. The only time that he had was when I was a child.

I loved him all of my life, but came to accept that I could never have him, even when he was just an inch away. I watched him falling for her, I watched her manipulating him and everyone in the kingdom, but my only thoughts were: well, at least she wasn't cheating on him or causing him harm like the one she could cause my father if I ever spoke, and I hoped with all of my heart that the love she said she held for him was real.

And I told him – I told him everything about how his wife took everything from me, and only kept me alive to write letters to my father, or so I thought. The letters where I told him I was fine, and then waited and lived to get his response. For years, she would go visit him, lock me in the cells while she was away, and tell him I was busy. He was too weak to move and come to the castle.

I told him, and watched for the first time in my whole life as a tear escaped his eyes. A tear that tear open my heart.

Without further talk and since he was a king and was supposed to think before acting, he asked about the herbs, his voice broken and his face miserable.

~i~