Hidden - The Hidden Chronicles - Volume 1

Chapter Five - Aria

The more time I spent at the manor, the slower it seemed to pass. 

In the months I'd been 

here time itself seemed a far-off concept. Days blended together, sun into moon, and no one paid it much mind. There was no founded routine and the council went about their days with ease, knowing that they are not dictated by such an abstract concept; numbers on a clock, tick tock, tick tock.

At first I found it strange and unnerving; meetings in the night, strangers coming to call on business matters by moonlight, but now I found it freeing. Still, some nights were longer than others, when the halls were mostly quiet, but the company was pleasant enough.

During the hours I found myself awake and restless, I'd wonder the halls in search of new rooms to explore or a friendly conversation. Avaneese was always ready for an eager student in the garden or the apothecary, and Kastha loved company on her hunts through the forests. I was too large now to run, but I could sit and watch a snare all day passing hushed whispers between us. Sometimes I would even find myself in the training facilities, a silent observer. It was usually Tangora in the ring, sword spinning around her body as natural as a limb. It wasn't unusual for Endellion to join her, their deadly dance of steel lasting hours as they took turns backing each other from one corner to the other. Neither gave up, and neither fell easily. A few times now after Tangora had left the room, Endellion had called me down to the raised platform. At first I had refused, feeling foolish in my gown, my stomach protruding well past my chest now and my walk becoming more of a wobble, but he was a persistent man. Eventually I caved to his charm, taking his hand as he led me across the floor. "Every lady should know how to defend herself," he had said, and I couldn't say I disagreed. From then on it had become a coveted distraction

Every now and then it would occur to me that these kind people were also my captors; the villains of my nightmares who haunted the halls of my dreams then walked with me through them by daylight. Sometimes it was hard to separate the two sides of them, and then sometimes I wondered if I should at all. Though they were kind, the parts of them which haunted me also made me feel closer and not so alone in this huge place. The darkest parts of their selves were also the most familiar, the most human, when it felt all too often as if they were untouched by life, its sinful prints never smudging the surface of their demeanor. It was a confusing process of the mind, sorting through the emotions and the facts, when all too often I was naive to both.

And so I found my solace in the library, Endellion's library, among the books and papers; the histories and the stories. Sometimes if I were lucky, I could completely forget where I was, why I was here and what would become of my life in just a few months' time. While I was reading, I was someone else among persons unknown and as I sat there, submerged in the life of someone else, another life would kick me from within and I would again find myself prisoner and mother all the same.

As my belly grew and the seasons changed, I slept less and less, due both to discomfort and the unease in knowing the future; my future, Adel's future, our baby's future. My eyes stung with the yearning of sleep but my mind and heart were running away inside of me. I could feel myself growing colder and I wondered how it could be that surrounded by the kindest people I have ever crossed, I would become distant and closed from the world. Shutting it out, when I could, was my survival and it was becoming easier and easier as time passed. I knew I would break soon.

Slipping out of bed and into the darkness I pulled the warm green robe over myself and around my protruding belly before easing myself out of the door and into the hall on my way to the library, hoping to become someone else for a few hours before the sun rose and illuminated the truth again; I am just Mara, lover of Adel, mother of a child I will not have and may not know. Sinner of our kind, failure to my love, unknown to my baby.