Part 8

He took his role as my temporary guardian very seriously, he even seemed to grieve with me. Though now I know he was grieving for me, for I had indeed died the day my family had. I had simply not died in the way they had. When they were together in the plain beyond my reach, their life taken away from them and their body separated from the soul to allow them to rest, I had died alone. My mind had died, my heart had died, my soul had died. The only still living part of me was my body, stubbornly clinging to life every next day. I remember crying and begging it to die too, so I could finally go to them.

He grieved for the loss of life I suffered. The loss of my childhood, the loss of my heart, mind, and soul. It was for that that he shed tears.

Sir Lionel was a good man from what I could remember. He was barely ever away from my side and hardly allowed anyone who wasn't a maid I had been raised by or the doctors near me, he saw how much people distressed me then. In his way, he tried to care for me, in the months that we stayed there.

He might have told me at the time, though I had not heard it, but plans were being made for me. The King of his Kingdom has been an ally of my father and had a son who was a close friend to my mother. More than close enough for the prince to call himself my uncle and demand me, and any other surviving members of my family, be brought to him for him to care for. Lionel’s king had sided with my father against my grandfather, the two of them working towards peace and prosperity between our lands. My father cared not for money, lands, or titles, he simply wanted his family to be happy and well provided for.

I would not learn until much later that this was the reason my grandfather had called us all into the throne room that day. He had found out about his adopted son’s trickery, and knew of the plan he and my uncles had devised. He knew that the castle was meant to be taken and that he would fall when it did while my family lived happily ever after in our little fairytale world. How I wish it had gone to that plan.

Instead, Grandfather had slaughtered them all. Leaving my brother to kill him in vengeance for our father and my mother to run to me. To give me mercy and then give some to himself as well. But that had not fallen out as it should have either.

“Little princess?” It has been a month now. The rooms were colder and I was wrapped in more blankets. The snow was coming soon. Sir Lionel had wanted to get me back to his kingdom, to my unknown uncle, before the winter fell.