His Queen

Recovery

Ziya's POV (*= POV switch)

  "Come on its you're turn now", I said impatiently

  "He's waiting for you," they said.

    I looked up from the table to see my mother sitting right across from me.

    "I know," I said quietly.

  "Well if you know then why are you here, instead of out there with him?" she asked.

  "Mother," I warned.

  I didn't say anything after that, I know that I was being a coward. I could hear him sit beside me every day telling me about all the things he has done on that day. I could feel him hold my hand tightly, almost as if he was afraid I would disappear one day.

  "Fine, I won't rush you," she conceded. "Check-mate I win, that makes thirty-seven wins for me and thirty-seven loses for you," she laughed.

  "I just can't seem to win against you," I sighed.

  "Ziya, my love, if you can hear me..." I heard an echo from the distance. 

  "He's good one, diligent too, even when he has to attend to matters in Afisa, he makes sure to visit you every day," she commented.

  "Mother," I warned.

  "No, don't mother me, out with it. Why are you still here?" she said.

  In this realm that I stayed in, I was neither alive nor dead. Just drifting. It was silent for a while and then I was approached by my mother. Shocked wouldn't even begin to describe how I felt, it looked like her but older. What I imagined she would look like if she hadn't died young.

  At first I stayed in this place to be with her. I told her just about everything that happened while she was gone. I laughed with her and cried with her about the time we had and the time we lost. It was comfortable in this space, I didn't have responsibilities or things to worry about. And I could be with the one person I missed more than anyone.

  My mother sighed. "You know eventually you're going to have to choose. You can't stay in this realm, it's only meant for people to pass through. Whether they choose to go back or decide that they've lived long enough," she said.

  "So decided that you've lived long enough?" I asked, swiftly changing the subject.

  She narrowed her eyes at me slightly, knowing what I was trying to do. "It wasn't so much that I believed that I lived long enough, rather I was trying to set the course on the right path again," she said.

  "What do you mean?," I asked.

"I knew your father was cursed," she replied.

  "You knew? Then why didn't you do anything about it?" I asked.

  "I did in my own way, every night when he went to sleep, I would try to heal him. I spent countless hours in the library trying to find cures, methods, and spells that could have saved him. I couldn't find anything. I went to Lady Verum and asked her to look into the future for me. To show me what I had to do to save him and Asgard. She told me that I wasn't going to be the one to save the things I cared about, rather you were. I had to die, in order to make things right. And of course I thought about leaving, taking you in the middle of the night and just leaving Asgard , but there were moments when I could see him, my Liam. I could see him trapped behind those eyes and I just couldn't go. It would have better for you and me, if I had just left, but I couldn't. And that is the scary thing about love, if done incorrectly, it clouds your vision and completely blinds you. So, I made my choice. I purposefully chose not to heal myself when the sickness spread throughout the kingdom, I let myself die so that you could live and do what I couldn't," she said.