The Dragon and The Nomad

(4) More Than They Know

(4) More Than They Know

Maex

In the court of my father, my role is obvious. I am just a son among the many sons he had apart from my mother, and it didn’t matter that I was the son of his true mate. He did take enough medicine to ignore the mating sickness, but it wasn’t the case for my religious mother. She embraced the sickness for the both of them. Embracing Aegir’s wrath for deliberately ignoring his gift to the Draconi.

For that, my mother wanted to be a sister of the white flames but died to become a saintess. She is often who I thought of at times like this, memories of her lucid and sober and able to converse like any other, but my brother, Arius, would always be at her side like a knight. Guarding her and pulling her away when the mating sickness wracks her body and shielding us from seeing her in such a state

The image that almost demands that we forget any decent memory we have from her. The image of her pain. Her writhing. Her foaming mouth and slow, agonized expression always look up to the sky, looking for the god that she loved, but fails.

The first time that I ever saw it, it came like a thief in the shroud of the night. We were having dinner with her—a rare occurrence. All of us were so elated that she feels well enough to be with us in person. Everyone is in high spirits despite the obvious unfavorable status we have inside the palace grounds. Then it happened, it was like lightning has struck her, and she falls from her seat and starts seizing.

Her screams mirrored our horrified faces, and Arius was the only one who knew what to do when it happened. Merow froze. Mersia held her tears and tried to keep herself still, and I had to help Arius from taking her from the floor.

“Keep her head to the side,” He calmly tells me with precision to his actions of someone who has seen and done this more times than I could count. He looked so foreign to me.

“Give her sedatives.”

“She doesn’t want them.”

“What are you saying!? She’s in pain!”

“She is stubborn,” Arius growls. The first time he has ever done that towards me, but it wasn’t his growling that shut me up. It’s the helpless look that he gives me.

We carried her to her bed, a small bed that still looks like it could swallow my sick mother whole. She has been wasting away for most of her life, which hasn’t changed since she had us. It’s a miracle that she gave birth to four children without dying.

Then she died.

Not on that day, but it was in the middle of winter when everyone was in the house. Merow is usually tending to business to have our own money instead of relying on the meager allowance the palace gives us. Mersia has a talent for anything made from fabrics, so they manage a saloon and a tailoring shop in one of the districts. Arius absorbs himself in father’s court to keep tabs on the Queen’s activities and plans even though we’re not welcomed. We are hated. But they let us exist. I’m often taken away by invitations from foreign delegates. Dining and earning their respect in case there was a time we needed it.

Not that any of that mattered in the end.

At her funeral, her whole wasting body is placed on top of white lilies that were the same color as her hair. It used to be silver with a beautiful sheen until the mating sickness took everything from her. Her youth just escaped her like running water, while the four of us gathered around her body with a priest from her teenage years presided over her funeral.

“You must know now” Arius looks at us with something akin to pain and determination. A mix that I didn’t know what possible. “That the protection our grandfather has been null and void.”

Merow looks icy cold. her eyes could burn anything as she looks away while one hand clutches onto Mersia’s hand. “We need support, and we’re not going to get that from them anymore.”

“The queen wants us gone. Her daughter and son are pushing for the throne but as long as we’re all alive—”

“The aristocratic faction would never support them. Not when we’re the children of a saint” I pluck one lily from mother’s coffin. All memories of our mother are gentle and sweet, just like the lilies that she adored. She always told us that if we had another sibling, its name would be Lily. Thankfully, father has finally let her out of his chambers.

I remember the stench of iron that never left our mother from the blood of her shackles and to the iron shackles he kept on her. He was so obsessed that he truly chained her to his bed with only enough length for the necessities. Our childhood was mostly spent in the main palace, a place we hated more than our lives. Hence, when he got his medicine from one concubine, now the queen, we were given a cottage. A home that we love.

I see the scars on her wrist that would never fade. It’s been decades since he started chaining her, yet my mother never broke. She stayed the same gentle and kind mother that I always remembered her of being. A part of me resented her for not being able to fight for herself and for us. For being a slave to the mating hormones and accepting that that’s fate. She loved that horrible man till her death, even if she doesn’t admit it.

Softly, I caress her cheek, and it’s incredibly cold to the touch. My insides curl with the horrible head of sadness and grief that I could feel radiate from my chest to the soles of my feet. I feel my sadness spread outside of my body and into the earth like it’ll swallow me and everyone around me whole.

We really can’t be sad like this, and we definitely can’t linger. We have to survive first.

“We can draw in support from the Duke” I comb my fingers through her hair. Still soft and silky. A part of me waits for her to open her eyes and call for me, My love, my sweet bright love of my life. “I have networks that could help us. There is also the guilds I have contact with.”

Mersia, sweet and little meek, clings to Merow, but instead of having her head down, which I expected her to be, she’s facing me with an expression that I don’t expect from her. “You could marry me off.”

Merow and Arius almost snapped their necks to look at her. Mersia’s hand tightens around Merow’s arm, but the look in her eyes doesn’t leave her.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Merow gently says to her. “And we’re not going to do that.”

“She’s right. We don’t want the throne” Arius glances at mother. I know that he hardly ever looked at mother in a while since she died. He was the one who woke us in the middle of dawn to say that Mother died and that we all should help in cleaning her like what we promised her that we would. “We just need protection.”

“Then marrying me off is the most logical thing” Mersia’s voice cuts through despite it being the most gentle one between the four of us. She begs us by gazing at each of us. “There is the Duke, and if not him, then someone overseas that you know Maex. I could take you guys and—”

“We’re not doing that” I’m surprised at how beastly my voice came out. It shocks the three of them too, and I get that it’s strange for me to be so…serious. I’m as shocked as them. “We’re going to get through this without selling each other off.”

I wish I worked harder to save my family. I wished there was a way to save every part of ourselves before it actually happened.

“You had a bad dream.”

Poignant and deep. Her eyes peers worryingly down at me with so much concern that it makes my heartache and ache into a familiar pain that I once had. Her dark hair casts wide rings as it drops on one shoulder, and I follow her hair till it lands me to her hand on my chest.

I blink.

“Are you okay?” she says in an accent that is so melodic she sounds like she’s singing. I believe that she does sing. “It’s okay now. You’re awake.”

How can something so beautiful exist? Yet she’s here and was meant to be with me, who’s undeserving of her. She doesn’t know it, but she already has all of me. I take her hand, rough from working as a maid, and put it on my cheek.

You’ll always have me, Amara. Forever.

She smiles. “Yes, I’m here, and this is real. You’re awake now, and whatever you dreamt of is far and gone and has passed. We’re in the now.”

She doesn’t get it, and I understand, but my heart aches even more. I’m tempted to say more and just tell her everything, and then I would be with her. But what then? The Regent Queen would never let us go. She would never let any of us happy and would make sure that we suffer for merely existing.

I nuzzle her palm. Inhaling her sweet scent, which haunts me for all of my waking days and just silently, almost mutely, tells her that we’re meant to be together. Yet she still doesn’t hear it, and I’m silly for expecting her to do so. So instead, I say, “I’m here. I’m here.”

“Yes, you’re here” She smiles widely. My heart skips a beat. “Feel a little bit better?”

I breathe out. I keep forgetting to breathe around her. “Much better, and I do hope that I didn’t disturb your sleep.”

“No, not at all. I was awake this whole time.”

“What are you doing? The sun isn’t even up yet” I tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. Her hair is as wild as the wind, and I don’t think anyone would be able to tame it, but a part of me wants to try. “And are you still wearing your uniform?”

She blushes. All shades of guilty “I-I was restocking the storage room.”

“You haven’t slept at all,” I frown.

“Y-Y-Yea—okay, I haven’t” She purses her lips. The redness has spread to her ears. “My body does not permit me to sleep.”

Without thinking, I pull her arm, and she falls to my side. Her wild hair is so close to my nose that I swoon at the scent of her. She falls on the soft bed beside me, and her wide eyes and open mouth remind me of prey. A rabbit caught by a predator with nowhere to run.

“Sleep,” I tell her.

She shakes her head. “I-I’m quite alright. I just nee—”

“Sleep” I pull her towards my body and feel her stiffening. “If you cannot sleep on your own, then I’ll stay with you.”

“I’m fine inside my room.”

“You mean the storage room and the floor.” There is a part of me that loves this and relishing this moment of being this close to her. I don’t deserve to touch her like this, but just this once, just for now. Let Aegir forgive me. “Sleep and protect me from dreams that I do not want.”

She chuckles. “I do not think that I’ll be able to help you with that.”

“You do” more than you’ll ever know.