Chapter 17: Chapter 17

Shia returned to the tent where he found the prince still calmly sitting down on the small table with his food still untouched. It looked as if he was waiting for her to come back, which she did sooner than anyone would have expected.

Shia eyed the back of the prince’s dark hair suspiciously. It did not look like he was even a bit alarmed about the news that Marmie turned up dead just a few hours after the ruckus at the kitchen and before she was to be taken to the Capitol. Shia slowly sat down and joined him on the breakfast table with her brown eyes intently fixed on his majesty’s face.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I saw?” she inquired.

“I have no need for that. They will soon make a report of what happened,” he said rather coldly.

Shia felt a little confused as to how the prince could easily go from being sensitive and delicate to being stiffly cold, heartless, and unfazed in a heartbeat. She tried to look at him straight in his right, visible eye in an attempt to read his mind, but just like before, Shia was unable to do so. He was too impassive for her to make sense of. Thinking how he must be somewhat irked due to the manner of how she had left him earlier, Shia sighed and started cutting the fish in front of her in silence with a knife.

Soon enough, the snotty Lord Fincher and the red-headed Lady Khailis came by to make an official report to his highness.

The lady guard gave Shia a short, sympathetic stare as their eyes met, and yet she did not seem as sad as she was a few hours ago based on Shia’s memory.

“I bring some rather good news, my Lo-,” the foolish First-In-Command stopped his sentence midway when he realized that Shia was there, boring a hole straight into his skull with eyes as sharp as steel. He cleared his throat and rephrased his words, but the relief in his voice could not be hidden. “I brought you some...news about the cursed one, sire. She has been found dead – poisoned this morning!”

He handed his majesty some papers for the report. Prince Langrion continued to say nothing and shuffled through its numerous sheets.

“Somebody must have slipped something on her food and drink. The doctor was not able to find anything in particular, except that it looked like a quick death on her part,” Lord Fincher continued.

“Since it has turned out this way then, you don’t need to bring her body with you to the Capitol,” the prince replied to him casually while handing him back the sheets of papers. Shia could not find even the slightest hint of emotion in his voice.

“I-I guess so, sire...” the doofus Fincher mumbled.

Prince Langrion turned to his other guard and spoke again, “Lady Khailis, do find a proper spot around here and set up the funeral pyre. Make sure you personally carry out the necessary preparations for the burial. Tell the doctor and the knights that they do not need to make any further investigations. Wrap things up as quickly as possible. I don’t want people to start talking and remembering what has transpired this morning.”

The Prince had settled down again in his chair and began picking up his cutlery. “You may leave now, Lord Fincher. I don’t want to delay your important errand at the Capitol. As for the rest, we will start travelling to Sensala after two hours.”

The lord and lady made a small bow towards the two of them and left as soon as his majesty has completed his orders.

The prince and Shia resumed their half-eaten meal in complete silence. After finishing the last bite of her breakfast, Shia rose up to leave, but his majesty suddenly held her hand and spoke.

“Aren’t you going to ask me any questions?” he said.

It was now Shia’s turn to be stoic. “No, sire,” she spoke, turning his back towards him. She stopped midway, however, and added further, “I think I understand the magnitude of your mercy now, my lord.” She began to stifle a yawn. “This has been a rather long night for me. If you will excuse me, your highness, I will go ahead and catch some sleep before we start our journey.”

“What a strange one,” Shia breathed out to herself as soon as she was out of his highness’ earshot. Indeed, Shia found the prince a remarkably strange person and the whole affair she witnessed as an even more remarkable one!

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Langrion thought it very strange as the girl batted her long, seductive eyelashes at him and gave him an icy stare. “I think I understand the magnitude of your mercy now, my lord.” She began to fake a yawn at him afterwards and took her leave to sleep some more before they start their travel to Sensala.

‘How utterly strange,’ the prince remarked to himself.

Shia lay down on her side of the bed for a few minutes, and when the servants walked in to help them get dressed, she just meekly took the clothes they provided her and followed them to the bath chambers.

Her strange behaviour continued until the two of them were inside the carriage going to Sensala. She did not protest when he asked her to sit beside him in the carriage and when he held her hands from time to time whenever he felt his curse becoming active or when he just felt like it. She rarely spoke to him, and she mostly looked outside the window, seemingly more interested in marvelling at the identical trees that passed by as they journeyed.

As a royalty, Langrion had somewhat become a master at reading people’s minds. He had to learn, from first glance, which person he could trust and which one would betray him in a heartbeat. He had already met countless women in his brief existence too, and he could always tell whether the girl was truly interested at what he had to say or at the title he holds. Mostly of course, they had always belonged to the second category.

Then, there were people who, no matter how much he tried to read, he just couldn’t. In his twenty years of existence so far, he was only able to know two people who fell in this final group: the Lady Edelfina and this pretty, silver-haired one sitting beside him who could go from being emotionally-charged and fearsome one moment to being delicate, soft, and vulnerable the next. Now, he was also discovering that she was also capable of being an inexpressive icy princess. Langrion shook his head in spite of himself and thought, ‘Is this what women are like?’

Langrion’s thoughts took him back to Edelfina and the night she had returned his mother’s ring. He would have preferred if she spoke harshly towards him, but surprisingly, she was gentle - even sympathetic - when she handed him back a pouch containing a letter and his ring – the ring that symbolized his undying love for her.

“We both knew this could never be,” she said, and then she held his face, “Don’t look at me like that, Langrey. I know you never loved me. You don’t, and you just can’t.”

But Edelfina was wrong. He did love her. However, he cannot undo the things he had seen between her and his brother that night at the party, so no matter how much his heart bleeds for her, he did not say anything. He just stood there and merely extended his hand to accept the pouch – his heart – that she had returned.

While deep in thoughts, Shia spoke so out of the blue that Langrion would have visibly jumped out of his seat if he wasn’t trained to look dignified even under pressure.

“At what time will the funeral pyre be held?” she suddenly inquired.

“As soon as it reaches midnight,” he said, clearing his throat.

Burial ceremonies in Gascone are quite demanding. Even if the person was part of the royal family, when someone dies, he or she needs to be immediately buried before the break of the next dawn. Only one chief officiator (usually the closest of kin) is allowed to be present at the burning of the body. The funeral pyre then can only commence at sunset, and it must continue to burn until the passing of the twelfth hour – the start of the new day.

During days of wars past, abiding by the proper burial rituals had been a tiring task, but nobles and commoners alike adhere to this tradition. Nobody in their right minds would dare to anger the gods, and going against these rites is certainly at the top of that list.

Before night time approached, Langrion ordered the procession to stop and set up for camp. The servants worked quickly and positioned the tent for him and Shia to rest and clean themselves while they waited for dinner.

Throughout the night, she meekly followed his words. She did not start protesting when he got closer to her without warning or when he slipped his hands around her waist as he assisted her with getting on and off the carriage. Truly, the air must have been filled with a strange enchantment that evening!

At dinner time, Shia got up from her seat after finishing only a bowl of soup.

“I’m sorry, your highness. My head is throbbing a bit. I think I would set out for bed early today.”

“As you wish. Do you want to drink some medicine?” he inquired.

“It’s alright. I think it might be cured with just some sleep.”

She proceeded to lie at her side of the mattress facing away from Langrion. She did not stir nor change her position even after Langrion climbed to his side of the mattress as the night progressed.

Some more hours passed by. Shia still looked sound asleep. Something did not feel quite right to Langrion. As he began to reach to her shoulders to check on Shia, her sleeping form quickly disintegrated into a pile of dead leaves.

He cursed despite himself, “By thunders, I knew it!”

Without wasting another second, Langrion collected his garments and sword. He stealthily took his horse and rode as fast as he could to where his betrothed must have surely gone.