Wife of Vladimir ||Book One||

Her Determination

"It started out as a simple cough. I hadn't been worried about it at first, trying to assure myself that the priest at my ceremony had merely been trying to frighten me of things that didn't exist. However, as the next week followed it was accompanied by a burning throat that could never be soothed. My joints began to ache the following week, making me feel as though my body was thousands of years old. My back throbbed with each movement I made and my muscles grew weak. Eating was hard as I often threw it all back up, making sleep incredibly difficult.

It seemed that every week that passed, a new symptom of this unknown illness struck me. I had first believed that it was the signs of the fever that had killed my father, but quickly learned that it was something far deadlier.

I had known emotional misery, and the misery that plagued a person every few months, but this was different. Each morning I woke, there was hardly any time to feel optimistic about my condition. It began hurting to breathe, or to even open my eyes while a candle was lit nearby. Worse yet, while the people believed me close to death, I continued to live. I lived through it all, unsure if I would be alive the next morning.

I hadn't wanted Rosetta to know about this concerning illness. I had played it down at first, refusing to let her worry. I met with the doctors in private, making them swear on their lives they wouldn't even utter a whisper to my wife and they all promised. I had taken Rosetta from Invea with the promise that I would protect her for the rest of time, not that I was going to die before we reached a year of marriage. She was too young to be a widow. I had tried for so long to keep it from her, but as my condition worsened she was able to catch on. While we never spoke about what the future possibly held for me, I knew that she thought of it.

I thought of it, too. I considered writing a letter to Caelum telling him of what had happened, begging him to come out after I had passed to continue protecting Rosetta. If I wrote it now, I could request Franklin to send it to Invea after my death. It was a harsh truth I forced myself to swallow.

If I died, I wanted Rosetta to be safe. I wanted her to be secure and to never fall into the hands of her father again.

As I neared the six month of my illness, and our six month of being married, I was completely bedridden.

My legs had struggled to work the week before. My muscles tightened and cramped any time I took a step, my knees threatening to give out underneath me completely. The doctors, and Rosetta, had decided that this was what was best for me. I absolutely despised it, thinking of my father who had passed weeks after becoming bedridden. I didn't want the same for me.

I didn't want to spend my last few weeks stuck in my bedroom. The only thing that kept me from fighting it was Rosetta, my beautiful sun. She would spend as much time as possible with me, making the room brighter and the time easier to pass by. She made it easy to forget that I was dying.

My eyes often grew tired, making any kind of reading practically impossible. I couldn't read more than a few pages without feeling the need to sleep. I had never felt that kind of exhaustion before. Rosetta was the one who had noticed it first and had started reading to me. She read my favorite stories, several of her own favorites mixed in, and letters that I needed to address.

It was through her that I got any work done in my sickly state. It was also through her that rumors were shut down.

I had never considered Rosetta to be an actress, but she had done remarkably well. All I was able to do from the bed was tell her how I wanted her to reply to letters. I gave her my words and she would write it out. She had studied my handwriting and had done her best to imitate it. When people came looking for me, she politely led them out saying that I was far too busy to speak to anyone. Not one person outside of our mansion knew about my condition.