The Prince and His Slave [REWRITTEN]

Chapter 21 - [Ease]

- Arius -

My lips were still tingling from the kiss. I wanted to kiss her again, but I also didn't want to push my luck. So instead, I refused let her leave that night. I made her stay, though she didn't seem too keen on that.

I had told her that I loved her, yet I felt that I knew so little about her. So I made her stay, and we talked for the whole night.

I made her tell me all about her life at home, so she told me about her friends, the women she helped, the babies who she delivered. She told me about the complications and the simplicities. She told me that her favourite thing about being a midwife was feeling a newborn baby wrap its hand around her finger. It made her feel loved... and it made her feel like she was helping to bring more love into the lives of these women.

Sometimes the women had their husbands by their sides, but most of the time the husbands were gone... either away working or dead. "A newborn," she had said, "can always console the hearts of these lonely women."

And every word she spoke made me love her more.

She was remarkable.

I had never met a girl like her. A girl so wise despite being so young.

I couldn't sleep. How could I?

All I wanted to do was listen to her speak... to tell her stories. My own worries and concerns seemed to vanish when she spoke, as she filled my mind with what goes on in hers.

I had never felt this way before.

"What made you two so close?" I asked, referring to her father. She seemed like she adored her father. She spoke very highly of him all the time. And I wasn't surprised by this. She did, in a way, give up her own life to help him.

"My mother died when I was very young, so my father tried his best to fill that void which was created when she passed," she said, "I knew what he was doing and appreciated it, a lot."

I was lying down on my bed, hands behind my head, staring at the ceiling.

Despite all that had happened tonight, she refused to relax a little and, at the very least, sit on the bed.

Instead, she sat on the floor next to me leaning her shoulder against the bed as she hugged her legs, facing me.

I turned over to my side, resting my head on my hand as I looked at her. "If you don't mind me asking, how did your mother pass?"

She smiled sadly. "She caught something, an illness of some sort, and it took her," she said. "It was odd... I remember her being extremely healthy one day and then in bed, furiously Ill the next."

"It was the same with my father," I said. "He was an extremely healthy man, and then one day he got sick, and a few days later he passed."

It was so sudden that many people wondered if he had been poisoned. No one ever found out though. Of course, many people had their suspicions.

"And your mother?"

"My mother was always quite frail," I said, remembering her thin body and pale skin. "She passed shortly after my father... my brother and I believe it was of heartbreak."

Chione smiled sadly. "I'm sorry."

"No need," I said, "it was a long time ago."

She kept smiling, looking back down at her hands.

"Any sisters or brother?"

"None," she said. "I was the only child my parents had. And my father never remarried after my mother's death. Saia is like a sister to me, though."