He looked so tiny against the Dennith King, a man half again my father’s size. Instead, as I stood watching from this castle he built for a mother I never knew, my father drew his sword, and a deep breath filled my lungs as I prayed. Wondering if today they would give their own lives for a war between men that simply used them as tools of battle. The horses armored as well as the men they carried, snorting and pawing the ground, sensing the tension from their riders filtering down through the saddles and into their own hearts. Both mounted on black stallions, the rode out in silence and stared at one another. King Harrig of the North met my father on the field between the golden castle and the dark forest, the no man’s land where Dennith begins and Aramoth ends. Another mother wailing as the body of her son was brought into the square on a wagon piled with his comrades, none of whom would know the sunshine of tomorrow.
He sent all other Aramoth troops back behind the walls of the city unable to fathom another child losing its father. I think of the day my handsome and loving father rode out to meet the northern Dennith King. I still remember the terror, as I was a little girl when the bloodshed stopped. Our neighbors have not always been our friends here in Aramoth, but a tense truce has been held between our kingdoms and families for more than a decade now. Last spring we met, at a gathering meant to celebrate the coming of a new prince to the north. The empty hollow in my chest darkens as I lose sight of his outline, hands pulling at my arms, worried voices chiming in my ears as I slip backwards, sending a message through the darkness with my eyes. Surfaces that gleam crimson in the sunset or the light of dawn, reflecting and refracting. Now it’s my prison, despite the way its grand columns sparkle in the sunlight, flecks of gold mixed incomprehensibly with the stone. My golden castle, built for my mother on the site of an ancient war garrison, a wedding gift from my father for his beloved, who died giving birth to me. To come further into the candlelight, so the curse befallen me will be without its prize for one more day. Fussing and tugging at me to come away from the darkness of the window, lest I freeze. Soon, my handmaids will scurry around me. Already my fingertips are cold as the sun retreats into the horizon.
Here, day and night, the candles and torches burn, keeping me in the light lest I freeze to death. I see his shadow, ever moving along the line of trees as I’ve watched for a season already, while I stand brightly lit in my golden castle.
When I double over, clutching myself to keep from coming apart.
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