Mara - The Lady Grief (Completed)

36 A Little History

2650 B.C.E., Tombs of the Forgotten in the Desert

Winter, Month of Tebetu, One Year and Ten Months after Mara's Rebirth

Thane

I follow my Princess back down into the valley, watching her ass sway back and forth under her robes. My mouth keeps twitching in a smile as she mutters furiously to herself about a 'reckoning' and some 'explanations' that are due.

"Back down to the tombs and we'll talk, he says," she huffs to herself.

I grab her elbow as she slips on a rock, nearly tumbling down the embankment.

"Slowly, Princess."

"Don't you tell me what to do!" she snaps. She yanks her arm from my grasp.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Princess."

"Stop calling me princess!"

"You are a princess, Princess. Our Princess."

"You're a pain."

I chuckle at the pique on her face.

"Why are you so... so infernally happy?" she snaps at me, turning back around. She slips again.

I catch her wrist this time. "Because-" I start to respond when I feel it.

"Because what?" she sighs exasperatingly.

"What is this?" I ask softly. I turn her wrist over to the soft underside and push up her sleeve. Thick, white scars ring her wrists like macabre bracelets. I pick up her other arm and she allows me to. "Are these scars what I think they are?"

"My father left these. He said that they were a reminder."

My eyes slide closed, thumbs brushing over the thickly raised skin on my Lady's delicate wrists. Bile surges up. I feel my heart aching and my head spinning.

The god... he chained me by my wrists, dangling in the pit for months. Yet, my wrists bear no scars. He left this reminder on my sweet princess' pale flesh for me. I may have been lied to about her torture, her betrayal, everything... but I knew she was imprisoned. I knew she was going to die as a traitor.

I put her in chains.

"Thane?" her voice penetrates the fog of pain and grief I am selfishly wallowing in.

I blink. "Sorry, Princess. A thought... a dark thought, that's all."

She carefully pulls her wrists from my hands. As much as I miss her touch, I don't want to keep feeling that message from Nateos.

"So, why are we heading backwards, again?" I ask her with forced cheerfulness.

She gives me a scowl of pure disdain. "I am going to seek out the tombs because my father's strength is higher there and I need to speak with him. You are following me because you are creepy."

"Fair enough," I shrug.

She starts to turn around, her pert little nose in the air, when she spins back to me. "You can't hide your grief from me, by the way. I can see it riding your shoulders, even with that stupid grin on your face."

"I know the grin. It's the one that says, 'my Lady is so very talented, isn't she?'"

She scoffs and turns away again.

"Or, is it the one that says, 'she's so very beautiful and not at all clumsy?'"

She gasps, looking at me again, clearly affronted. "I am not clumsy! You and your brother..." her voice trails off.