The Prince's Assistant

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

When a person fancies themself in love they will do just about anything for that special someone. I, on the other hand, wanted to strangle the bloody mongrel I called prince and on occasion, friend or my love. He was willingly marrying going to marry Guinevere, as per his father’s wishes.

How could he marry that harpy?

When he told me the other day, my heart felt as though it had been ripped apart. It took everything in me not to burst into tears. Luckily, I had managed to hide my true feelings but only for a little while. Once he left me, in the stables, him pleading weariness, I let my true feelings, my pain, go. I sobbed in Constantine’s stall for half an hour or so before i fell asleep on his fresh, clean hay. I met him that night at the DeerHead. I had hoped he’d tell me about his up coming nuptials but he didn’t. I could see it was bothering him, so i played dumb. I asked, as Marianna, if something was upsetting him; he just brushed me off.

Taking a deep breath, I opened my eyes and realized I wasn’t at the tavern anymore but at home, in bed. I rolled over and sat up, my feet dangling off the side of the bed. i absent mindedly rubbed my injured leg, something I found myself doing more often than not. I stood up, stroking sleeping Saphire’s furry little head as I went. Going through the motions I went through every morning, I got ready to face another day. Maybe today it wouldn’t hurt as much as it had yesterday or the day before that. I wonder what Mother would say if she were here. Would she tell me to get my act together? Or would she tell to just go for it and not worry about the consequences, like she had with my father? Splashing water on my face shook me from my thoughts. I dressed Quickly and walked into the room Marcus and I used as our “dining room”. It was really just a table with books piled on it and a couple cabinets against the wall. Usually, the room was empty in the morning but today was different. Marcus was leaning against a counter, reading, occasionally reaching down into a small bowl to grab a berry and to bring it to his his mouth. He was so Handsome when he was like this, so carefree. He didn’t seem to notice me when i first walked in. It wasn’t until after I moved away from the door that he looked up from his book, jumping ever so slightly.

“I didn’t know you were awake yet.” He moved away from  the counter, closing the book he’d been reading, no longer captivated by the words on the pages. It was something that I adored about him, the way he could get completely entranced by something.

“I couldn’t sleep.” I sat down at the table and took the offered bowl, spooning the soupy porridge into my mouth. As I watched Marcus put the book back into it’s proper place, Saph sluggishly crawled out of my room and came to sit on my lap. The breakfast Marcus gave me was bland and tasteless, but for some reason I had this unusual urge to savour it. I took another bite as I looked out of the cloudy window, that was in a desperate need of a cleaning, to my right. Why couldn’t prince’s be free to marry who they wanted? Why didn’t he have a choice? Didn’t he have the right to be happy? Saph’s tail flicked along the inside of my arm, forcing me to turn my attention to him. He regarded me with narrowed eyes.

‘Enough, Sapphire, I know. Don’t look at me like that, Why can’t we just be happy together?’ His eyes soften from their scrunty. ‘Because that’s the way life works, child. I have lived a lot longer than most humans, I know how Fate plays with her strings. Tugging them the way a child plays with a doll for the first time. She brings people together and pulls them apart for fun or for other reasons, no one knows.” His eyes showed a sadness that I had never seen in them, like he knew Fate personally. His eyes also showed a deep longing for a loved one. A thought went through my head, did Sapphire have a lover a long time ago? Before he became my mother’s familiar and then mine? Was she still out there? Saph flicked his tail along my arm again.