Mara - The Lady Grief (Completed)

7 Forgotten Entombment

2651 B.C.E. City of Tmari-on-the-Euphrates

Winter, Month of Kissimelu, Nine Months after Mara's Rebirth

Thane

I make it home just in time for supper. My family is gathered at the table, subdued as typical of late.

I walk in with wet hair frozen to my scalp. My limbs are numb, my heart is frozen.

"Thane! What happened to you?" my mother, the lady Kaimi, daughter to the recently-deceased Lord Arim of the First House, exclaims in horror, her concern for her eldest son obvious.

"Nothing, mother. I had something I needed to do, that's all," I offer the excuse I prepared on my walk home. 'Ask those who need to tell you the truth...' it makes no sense and absolute sense all at once.

I had signed off on the death warrant of my own Fated. I knew she was to be executed. I knew that she was young, just sixteen, when she was put on trial for treason against the First House. Never before had a child of such a young age been tried for treason. Gods, she would be seventeen now, wouldn't she? What would I have gotten for her birthday? Would I have finally found the courage to bring her home, the little Acera female, to my House?

It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? I ask myself. The old gypsy woman in the desert was right, who would believe a child so young could do those things? How did I believe it?

My grandfather, Arim,... he was my idol. He was the one who told me how Parijan had betrayed us. She was planning on selling our secrets to other Houses. It sounds ridiculous.

The wooden handle of the knife in my hand cracks in my hand. I look at it absently.

"Thane?" Anthea's gentle hand on my arm pulls me from my stupor. "Are you all right?"

"I am," I lie, gently shedding her touch. I am too tainted for her pretty, manicured hands to touch. I can scent the sacred pool waters in my nostrils, still, and can't help but imagine that it smells of my true Fated's blood.

The vision flashes in my mind. Her beautiful eyes, unfathomably dark, holding the secrets of the gods. Then, nothing, life drained from her broken corpse.

Choking, I stand, ignoring Anthea's struggles to her own feet next to me. For once I don't help her rise, and she is clumsy with my first child heavy in her. My first son... with a Choice bonded.

I never approved the vicious imprisonment in the dungeon or the interrogation of my Fated. Who else knew about her arrest and could have given such horrifying orders?

My father, definitely. One of my brothers, maybe. Anthea's father? A possibility.

"Thane!" his mother's voice cuts through his thoughts.

I look at her. She has his eyes. My grandfather. He would have done it. My grandfather, who has been rejected by Death.

For the first time in months, I acknowledge the truth. My true Fated was murdered. That delicate child in the dungeon was not guilty of anything more than being unlucky enough to be paired with me.

"Excuse me, mother," I step backward, scraping my chair on the floor with a loud screech, "I must go."

Ignoring the protests of my family, I stride from the room to the private study of the Lords of the First House.

"Thane?" my father's exhausted countenance greets me. I hadn't even realized that he wasn't with us at dinner.

"She was beaten and whipped before she was stabbed to death."