12. Rest
12
Rest
The garden is filled with expensive and rare exotic flowers that Sileas doesn’t understand. Most of them looked as if they came from a tropical country, the birds of paradise, the orchids, and other flowers that she didn’t know the name of, unknown beautiful things under the palace’s garden.
The diamond palace glittered from the bench she’s sitting on, and she can’t help but admire everything. The silence. The breeze. The sun on her skin and the flowery scent on her nose.
She doesn’t know what to do with herself.
She sat primly on the bench. Her back straight with hands on her lap as she was taught to do, and doesn’t know how else to sit. Resting isn’t in her training. The last time she ever had any kind of rest was before she was taken to her grandparents. Knights had to pry her out of her parent's arms when they came to the villa.
Now she’s sitting on the bench inside the palace, work taken from along with reason. She knew change would come, but didn’t think it would feel this way. At first, she felt untethered and didn’t know how to feel about it, and now she knows. It felt odd. Unsettling and odd like she didn’t know what to do with herself.
“Do you want some calming tea?” Feina insisted behind her. Always just a few steps behind and watching her every move. Not that she minded as Feina is cuter and nicer than her last attendant. This girl actually cared for her.
She smiled over her shoulder to look at her personal attendant. “Yes, that would be lovely.”
“I would prepare some then” She bowed with a soft gentle smile before leaving Sileas on her own.
With her thoughts.
She never had this much silence before. With her parents, there was music, conversation, and laughter. With her grandparents, there was pen on paper, rustling books, and countless etiquette lessons that filled her days. She could still hear the metronome in her sleep as her grandparents pushed her to learn the harp. The piano reminded them too much of her human mother, too much of the son that they lost to an ill mating.
Now she has the silence. Even her mind is in shambles without work to think of.
“you’re the only person who laughs at death, but seemed to fear the silence of the garden more.”
His voice brought her back from the spiral in her thoughts. The longing and aching in her chest gripped her tightly, almost as if she was underwater and her lungs could barely expand under the weight of the pain.
“Were you not busy your highness?” She heard herself before she even realized what she was about to say.,
Eitr emerged out of the bushes of tropical flowers. The palm tree’s leaves cast a shade over his face. He is tanner than before and looks more lethal and against every beauty standard of Dracone.
“Is this how I should terrify you? With silence and rest?”
She shook her head. “Did I look that horrified?”
“You answer questions with another question. You irritate me to no end.”
She looks at the ground with a secretive smile. “Then why not kill me?”
“I thought about it, but I want to hear about this proposition of yours.”
Something lit inside her. Hope clung to her chest and soul. It pulled her wandering soul back to this empty shell of flesh. “Are you truly willing to comply?”
“I’m willing to hear it, but not much of anything else.” He sat beside her, but far enough that she wouldn’t be able to reach for him. “Castler is far too chatty and needed a lesson. He’s preoccupied with what I left for him, and I could add more to his workload after this.”
She laughed. The thought of the tall and lanky Draconi with odd eyes frantically doing paperwork is amusing. “Alright, I was going to propose a contract between us.”
He stayed silent, but kept gazing at her expectantly.
“The both of us didn’t want this marriage, but we’re forced to be in this predicament. So, I suggest we have a contract, where we would end in divorce when we both get what we want. You, the throne, and I, leaving the capital.”
He was silent for the longest time until he cracked a sardonic grin and laughed. The way he laughed sounded so sinister as if she had said a cruel joke.
“You surprise me in every turn Amertine.”
“Sileas” she corrected. “Just Sileas.”
He scoffs. “The rumors were wrong about you.”
“Rumors are just rumors.” She noticed her nervous habit of rubbing her thumb on her curled index finger again, she didn’t stop this time. She just counted the callouses she got from learning to play the harp. “What do you say, Your Highness?”
He sighed. The heaviest sigh she ever heard from him
Then instead of replying to her with an answer, he got up and left her.
Leaving her in her silence all over again.
*The sweet torture of being the wife of the walk-out king