Red Snow (The Shadows bk.3)

Chapter 21: Disbelief

~ Irrelia ~

Since the Queen had left, the snow fell a little less each day. Cold wind replaced the snow and shattered any hopes the people had of escaping the cold.

The Queen had been gone less than a week but to the people it felt like months; months of relative peace and harmony. One had to be careful though, the Queen's guards patrolled the streets of every town, they had keen ears and were fiercely loyal to Her Majesty.

Under Einarr however, they were a little kinder. The people loved him, even those that had spurned him on his arrival.

During the Queen's absence, Einarr did what he could to make life for her subjects easier; he was more lenient than she was when it came to handing out punishments, he was more understanding as he had once been like them.

Everyday he tried to ignore the 'statues', he even considered destroying them. The only thing that always stopped him were the Queen's last words to him before she left, "I suggest you do nothing that would further infuriate me."  Her voice would seem to echo through his mind as though to remind him of what she was capable of.

~ Mirkwood ~

"Cousin?"

Sairene opened her eyes and lifted her head from the tree trunk she was leaning against. "Legolas!" Smiling, she got up and approached her cousin.

"Did I interrupt your rest?"

Laughing, Sairene shook her head, "no no. I had just closed my eyes when you came. Tell me," she met his eyes, "what can I do for you?"

"Nothing that I can think of," Legolas smiled down at her. Her answering smile was brighter than the sun-rays that filtered their way through the leaves. "Since I only recently found out that we are related, I figured that we should perhaps get to know each other a little better."

Sairene liked that, "perhaps," taking her cousin's hand, she led him into the garden. Leading him to the nearest bed of roses, she knelt down. "These were her favourites, my mother's." Gently surrounding the base of a bloom with her thumb and index finger, Sairene separated stem from bloom.

Legolas watched her intently. He watched as she carefully selected what she perceived to be the perfect flower. He smiled slightly when she reached up and held the rose out to him. Nodding in thanks, he took the flower from her and inhaled it's gentle scent.

She felt a certain sense of calm settle over her, one that she had not felt for quite some time. Sairene watched her cousin and smiled to herself, he was so different from his father!

"Your mother's favourite you say?"

Nodding, Sairene pushed herself off the grass and stood up. " Oh yes! She adored them. Roses were always her favourite flower, she had hundreds planted around the palace!" Images of her mother's rose gardens flittered like butterflies across her vision.

"What was your mother like? I never met her you see and my father never mentioned her either."

Sairene blinked back the tears that always came when she spoke of her parents. "My mother was quite possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. But you see, she was not only beautiful on the outside but also on the inside. The people loved her but not as much as my father did, he adored her," she did not bother to wipe away the tears that accompanied her words.

As Sairene recalled her favourite memories, Legolas began to wander why his father had never mentioned his sister before. From what Sairene was saying, his aunt sounded like a lovely person. "Your mother sounds positively lovely and as though she was a lot of fun."

Sairene smiled distantly and nodded, "oh that she was. She was the best mother in the whole of Middle-Earth."

"If she was as you have described, then why did my father neglect to tell me of her?"

The smile vanished. Sairene bit her lip, there was so much she wanted to say but she wasn't sure how to. She had to think about how she would say it. In the end, she decided she would just say it, politeness be damned. "I would say ask your father but he would just lie again."

Legolas was taken aback by her sudden change in tone and mood. "How dare you speak of my father that way!" No matter what his father had or hadn't done, no one spoke of him like that.

"I apologise....Your Highness," mockery and sarcasm coloured every word. "Forgive me if I don't hold your father is such high esteem as you obviously do. He lost my respect years ago."

"But why? Why do you dislike my father so much?!" As far as Legolas knew, they were the only family Sairene had left. He truly did not understand her animosity towards his father.

"Dislike?!" A short laugh escaped her, "I do not dislike him dear cousin, I hate him!"

"But why?! Why do you hate him?!"

"Because he ruined my life!"

"How?"

Narrowing her eyes, Sairene cocked her head to the side and looked at her cousin. "Are you sure you want to know? It might ruin that precious high pedestal that you have placed him on."

"Tell me, tell me how my father supposedly ruined your life." Legolas remembered what his father said about her vivid imagination and mental instability.

"He was involved in my mother's death. "
Legolas found this extremely difficult to believe. "How?"

"He bribed men to assassinate her," her ice blue eyes stared at him, lost in that moment so many years ago. "His own sister!"

"I don't believe you!"

"Of course you don't!" Her laughter echoed around the garden. "I was a fool to think you ever would, not with your precious father being the guilty one." Her laughter faded as she rounded on him, "no doubt he spun you some story about how I like to imagine things and how I'm slowly going insane?! Well if I am, it is thanks to him!" She moved away and knelt by the roses.

Legolas had never been so confused and shocked in his life! "What is that supposed to mean?!" She had gone from being sweet and kind to being nasty and cold within seconds!

Sairene did not reply right away. She played with the roses a little before standing up. "Thanks to your father and his involvement in my mother's death, my sanity, my sweet precious sanity is nothing but blackened ashes now. That is what I mean." Handing him a rose, Sairene turned and swept from the garden with her destination already in mind.