I Know He's a King

The war ended that night.

Vicdaen killed Ziyakhede. But not without help. It seemed that Hajieelkhe listened to what I said to him that day. And now it is finally over.

Well, not really. Placident got away. She fled as soon as she heard that the Wilijies were loosing. But there is a pretty huge reward for anyone who catches her. If she shows herself anywhere she will be quite dead.

Vicdaen was crowned the next day, and the Wilijies rejoiced. I never saw it, but I heard he looked triumphant. Hajieelkhe stayed the general of Veriton. And also became the right of Vicdaen.

I, on the other hand, did not fare so well. I knew I had burnt most of my lower body, but the flames had gotten past my wet shields. My arms were scorched, and a flame had licked the left part of my face. The hair would grow out, but there was not much left of it. They tried to, really tried to heal me, and they did, but the scars remained. I am barely recognisable by now. Nobody can understand what happened. Superficial wounds tended by a healer always heal without leaving any scars. Perhaps I was the exception to the rule, I said to them, but they called in the best healers of them all, all of them trying to heal me, but they all failed.

When Vicdaen saw me he left without saying a word. Lex visited me every day – he had no problem with my scars. I did not ask him how he could stand the sight of me when I could barely look at myself in the mirror, and especially since Vicdaen did not visit me. I think he could look at me because he knew that I was still the same. And I was still the same, just a bit sadder than before.

“Has he come to see you yet?” he asked carefully one day.

I shook my head. I tried to smile at him, but the left part of my face could not do that motion any longer, making all of my smiles crooked. “No.”

“I talked to him yesterday… He still intends to marry you.”

I cracked. “Only because he promised me. He doesn’t want to.”

“How can you be so sure of that?”

I sighed. “Look at me, Lex. You wouldn’t marry a girl that looked like this.” ‘You wouldn’t touch her either’, I thought regretfully.

He couldn’t answer that. He just looked away, and the silence fell between us. It went on for minutes, until he spoke: “I cannot refrain myself from thinking about what would have happened if I’d made sure that you’d chosen me… Perhaps the war hadn’t been over, but this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Please, Lex… You’ve always been faithful like a dog. Once you knew you had to get engaged to some princess you did it. All for the sake of Aarenion.”

“I only did it because of my stepmother. She threatened that if I didn’t marry she’d make sure that some of her daughters – my half sisters – would inherit the throne. And her threats are not to be taken lightly. So now I’m engaged to a half-witted girl, that hasn’t got half of your beauty, even now that you’re burnt.”

“When is the wedding?”

“In a month. We’re leaving in two days.”

“Will you take me with you? Please, bring me home.”

He looked as surprised as if he had seen pigs fly. “Of course.”


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Yes, I ran away. We barely said goodbye, but from what I could see of him, I knew he was relieved. He hugged Lex, a great bear hug, but me he avoided looking at. We couldn’t marry. Not with me looking like something the cat dragged in. If I had had hopes about him feeling something for me they were quenched in that moment. And it hurt.

The journey home went by in a daze. After the half of it I realised I was pregnant, but that I kept to myself. When Lex asked me why I was sick I answered that I was feeling anxious about returning home. I could not have Vicdaen finding out that I was pregnant. If he did a marriage would be inevitable. And I would never allow myself to be captured in a loveless marriage.

I returned home with a royal entourage. That was something to behold, and the whole village stopped working just to see why the king had arrived. I thought my mother was going to die when I saw her. She looked hollow and pale and seeing me probably had another of her nightmares come true. She wanted me to come back whole and safe. I came back, but I was nowhere whole. And she could see that even if I hid all of my scars behind a shawl.

My younger sisters danced around me, happy as sunshine. “We heard the king had gotten engaged!” sang my youngest sister Irina. “We knew it had to be you!” chorused the twins Hera and Reima.

“It’s not me”, I said to deaf ears.

“Back to work!” mother said with a sharp tone. They obeyed her instantly. “Now, let me look at you.”

She led me into our little cottage, seating me by the kitchen table. She removed my shawl and gasped for air. “Oh… My Amram, what happened to you?”

“There was a fire, and I was impatient.” I laughed.

“That’s not funny. Tell me what happened.”

I told her about the capture – avoiding everything about Vicdaen – and then about the fire and how they tried to heal me but how they couldn’t heal the scars.

“Hmm… But you’re not saying everything. I can see that you’re pregnant.” I gasped for air. How could she know when not a physical sign showed? “Could you explain that? I gave you all of my herbs.” The last she could hardly say, her jaw twitching violently.

“Mother, it wasn’t like that. I was fine.”

“Then why are you pregnant?”

“Because I fell in love.”

“And where is this man you fell in love with?”

“He doesn’t love me.”

“Did he ask you to marry him?”

“Yes… But I can’t marry someone who doesn’t love me!”

“It doesn’t matter as long as the child has a father!” she yelled.

“I didn’t know about me being pregnant until halfway here! And I won’t marry him!” I yelled right back at her.

She calmed down. “Alright. How far have you gone?”

I counted the days. “Four weeks.”

“If you marry someone within a month we can say it was a premature birth.”

“What?!” I rose violently from the chair. “No! Mother, I will not marry anyone. I’d rather get rid of the baby.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No one will marry me. Not with my scars.”

She looked up at me and nodded in defeat. “I guess not. Well, well… This family is already the laughing stock of this village. Good thing I’ve gotten two proposals for the twins. I have to agree immediately, before they find out you’re pregnant.”

I felt cruelly selfish then. I had turned down Vicdaen at last. If I had not my sisters would not have to marry anyone at the young age of sixteen.

“How do Reima and Hera feel?”

“Oh, they’re in love with them, these two youngsters. They’ll agree to the proposals.”

At least they were in love. They were lucky. It could have been old men wishing for young mares to breed upon. They were both very pretty and the village were full of old men, all of them equally perverted and disgusting.

This had me thinking of my father. “Where is father?”

“He’s dead. Murdered by some crooks in a bar fight in town. I can’t say I miss him.”

“When?”

“Not so long after you left. He spent a good deal of his money celebrating, the first free time I’ve ever gotten from him. He played cards, drank wine, slept with women. I didn’t feel the slightest envious. Then his big head got in the way of the chef’s knife in a bar fight. At least he left his pouch at home.”

“And…?” I encouraged her to continue.

“We could live an easy life for two or three years if we wished to… But we’re not going to do that. We’ll save them for the weddings to come, and for unexpected expenses. And since he earned that money at your expense I’ll give you half of it.”

“No, mother, don’t bother about it.”

“Shush. It’s no bother. And besides, you’re going to have a baby. You need it, especially if you refuse to marry… Are you sure that you can’t”, she tried once again to persuade me to marry.

“No! I won’t.”

“Alright… It’s okay. It’s good to have you back. With your father dead and Calem gone everything is a lot rougher. Perhaps we have a bit of money, but we don’t have the muscles needed for the fields. I don’t care how sick you are in the mornings, I still expect you to work as hard as before you left!”

“Until Reima and Hera marry?”

“Yes. Until they marry.”


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


I worked as hard as I could, but it was so much harder than before. Simple movements like leaning down or sitting on my heels had me running for solitude faster than a dog chasing a hare. Unfortunately my sisters did not have the common decency to understand what stays in the family and what is okay to speak about. So within a week since my homecoming the whole village knew about my pregnancy.

But still nobody dared to bother me about it. I could understand them. I… was not like before. I scared the children with my mere presence, and the men shied away their eyes when they spoke to me – if they had to speak to me. The women looked at me as if I was a fallen woman. I was a fallen woman. I had fallen, and I fell deep. Too bad I had to get burnt as well.

After my twin sisters’ wedding – in which I could not participate because of the above mentioned – I moved away. I moved away from the village, away from any civilization. The question marks around me and my pregnancy were far too many. The gossip reached me at last: Who was the father? Where was he? And when I would give birth to the baby everyone would know that the father was a Wiliji – and a Wilijian baby in an Aarenian village was too much off the scale of normalcy ending in that Vicdaen would know within a week.

There was an abandoned cottage a few miles south of the village, in the middle of a dense forest. In that house an old crone used to live, but she passed on when I was fourteen. She had no relatives or friends, but when people started to notice that she did not come any longer to the markets during summer and autumn she had already been dead for three or four months. She was given a proper burial ritual, which more than half of the village attended – even if she had no friends she had been helpful and still a part of the village. I could not help myself from comparing myself to her: If I died, they could not care less. And I could not stay a part of the community as she had.

The house was still in quite a good condition when I moved in. There was a small leak in the roof above the entrance, but it would not do any harm for a while. One shutter had cracked and fallen apart, and that was easily fixed with a hammer and a nail. Other than that the only visible negligence was that of dust covering the whole place.

I dared not visit Alexander’s wedding. Something inside me told me that I should have, but I silenced that feeling. Another part of me told me that the further away from Lex and Vicdaen I stayed, the better anyone would fare. It could have been my conscience, or perhaps my broken pride that said it, but it kept sending me signals of how wrong it would be to see anyone of them again. About a week after the wedding I got the news that his princess was a beautiful girl – what a liar Lex could be – and that she had already gallantly overtaken the rule of Alexander’s stepmother. So much for a half-witted girl.

The days went by, one by one. Months passed, summer turned into autumn, autumn turned into winter. I gave birth to my son – yes, a boy – in the middle of a blizzard. My mother had already temporarily moved in with me when she decided that the birth was close. I have to say that it hurts like nothing else I have ever felt before. Not even when I walked through flames it hurt like that. Anyway, I named my boy Rahel after my grandfather.

Time turned even faster after the birth. Suddenly it was spring once more, and the spring turned into summer. A year had gone since I had last seen Vicdaen and Lex. Little more than a year had passed since I left my mother, since my father sold me to become a prostitute.

Then one day – the day Rahel gave me his first real smile – I got a visit from someone who I was unaware of had been with me all the time.

Placident.

A/N: “So… Rose’s husband’s white… Didn’t see that one coming.”

No, aside from my crappy LOST knowledge – just gotta love that show – this story is nearing its very climactic or anticlimactic ending. I don’t know how it will be… I’ve got a knack for writing very anticlimactic endings, and I know… that’s not positive. Anyway, just bear with me… it will be over soon, and I thank everyone who’s stuck with me from the very beginning. This story will be like my first baby (don’t got any), and I’ll always treasure it.

PS. Sorry DC, I’m posting this without you editing… I want to do it this way, and I know that you’d rather see one of my Fuckbuddy chapters sent to you anyway.