A Mentor's Struggle

Chapter 5

I ran up beside Lief to his right hand as a stunning white mare rode into the palace. The princess, I realized, was in the front. Her hair was a bright red, falling down her back like a stream.

Her eyes were a cheerful green and she was clothed in a black dress with gray roses glittering in the sunlight. To my surprise, I thought she looked a lot like me.

If I thought that, you should have seen the king! It was as if I was a spitting image of him! He had brownish hair with wise, kind blue eyes that took in the kingdom warmly.

I stared at his armor with a golden sword attached to his hip. Lief rushed to help his bride to be off of her horse while I politely bowed to the king and grabbed his luggage from the back of his horse.

Their servants and servants from our own kingdom ran back and forth to aid the new people from the kingdom of Windsor. The king laid his eyes upon me and he smiled warmly, his eyes lighting up with joy, to my surprise.

Why would he be so happy to see me? I handed a servant his luggage and went to stand by Lief. to my surprise, he had the princess doubled over in laughter. Her cheeks were stained from tears of joy.

She lifted her head at my arrival and her eyes grew  The round with shock, but she quickly looked away and turned her attention back to Lief.

"Ah! Princess Thespia, allow me to introduce you to the second best knight in the kingdom, Sir Benedict!"

"Second best?" I teased. "Who's the first?"

"Why, me of course!" He teased, punching me lightly in the arm.

I smiled and turned to leave, only to have another fit.

No! Not here, please! I silently tried pleading to my body. I coughed violently but luckily I did not spew blood on the beautiful princess's dress. Both her and Lief and her shot me a mildly concerned expression but I bowed quickly before rushing to my chambers.

As soon as I ran in, I closed the door, I bolted it so nobody would disturb me, and I didn't want anybody walking in on me while I was researching what kind of sickness I could have. I climbed the shelves of bottles until I could reach the books I had stacked at the top and I tried to grab all of the books over sicknesses I could.

Most of the books were over types of herbs and mixtures used for certain illnesses. Rarely was there a case that I didn't know what was wrong with the patient.

I found it ironically humorous that the one sickness I get I didn't know what it was. I usually never got sick, my body had been forced to adapt and make itself immune to most every sickness in the kingdom.

I threw the books in my arms on the table I set up in the middle of the room and climbed back down the shelves, rushing to do my research before anyone noticed my absence. I knew I didn't have long till that happened so I began to research every sickness or disease from the black death to the plague, to the common cold.

I then flipped to a book titled Poisons, deciding that is was very likely I inhaled a toxic chemical or an assassin was in our midst. Fortunately, I didn't suffer any symptoms from that book.

From what I could gather, most poisons were made to kill quickly, so if I had been poisoned, the chances were that I'd already be dead. I felt my head begin to droop, realizing how tired I actually was.

Slowly, blackness clouded my vision, and I welcomed it with open arms. When I did awake, it was to a soft tap on my door. I slammed my books closed quickly and rushed to answer the door. If it was Lief, he would demand to know why I had bolted the door.

To my luck, it was Princess Thespia and her father, King Ezuras. I smiled and bowed lowly to the ground.

"Oh, none of that!" Thespia declared and enveloped me tightly in a breathtaking hug that sucked the air from my lungs. She let me go with a warm smile and allowed me to take a breath. My hands fell to my knees as I bent over, gasping for air.

"You must forgive my daughter, SIr Benedict, but I believe we have some rather serious news. Would you please take a seat at you chair?" Ezuras recommended gently.

I gave him a quizzical glance before nodding and plopping down on my cot instead, laying down from exhaustion. The king nodded in agreement as if he understood my fatigue and sat on the edge, resting his hand on my leg. I was shocked to receive such a warm gesture from a royal besides Lief, but my face gave away nothing of what ran through my brain.

I had so, so many questions. Why did these two look at me weird when they first saw me? Why did the princess hug me? Why was the king touching me fondly?

"Benedict, do you know the story of our royal family?" Thespia began.

I nodded my head weakly.

"Yes, your queen died from a rare illness that remains unknown after giving birth to you, her first and only child." I mumbled closing my eyes while talking to Thespia. I knew it was extremely rude to address royalty without mentioning titles or making eye contact, but they actually seemed happy I was comfortable to treat them like normal people.

"That, I'm afraid, is where you are wrong," Ezuras sighed.

I narrowed my eyes at him in confusion. I hardly said one sentence to describe their whole family, there wasn't much to it. What could I have possibly missed?
"I'm not the only child in our family," Thespia whispered.

"Really? That's what the scrolls claim."
"The scrolls were incorrect, as we recently discovered. Thespia, here, has a twin brother." Ezuras said.

"Why is he not with you, then?" I questioned. My head began to hurt from all this thinking.

"Well, that's the funny part. We've never met him. In fact, we were lied to our whole lives. My wife gave birth to two children, while I was told one survived. The physician who delivered the two children told us falsehoods and kept the child for his own purposes. He was a traitor and firmly believed that if a woman were heir to the throne, she would destroy the kingdom. He etook Thespia's twin brother so there would be no man to claim the throne, so he took the boy to this very kingdom."

"What?! Are you here to find him? Oh, I get it. You aren't really here to marry Lief, are you, Thespia?"

"I am indeed going to marry King Lief. Although an alliance between our kingdoms is necessary. We need an excuse to visit the kingdom so we could find my brother."

"You would marry a man you've never met to find your brother?" I asked in awe. This girl had serious loyalty.

"Family is everything. I have kin and I intend to find him.

"Okay, but why are you telling me all of this?"

"Benedict, would you please stand in front of your mirror beside Thespia?"

Suddenly, it all made sense. The questions flooding my brain suddenly clicked into place. Shakily, I crawled to my feet and stood next to Thespia. What I saw was the last thing I marvelled at before blacking out.

We had identical Auburn hair. Our eyes were like refectioning pools of the other's, and we stood in the same stature. The shape of our faces had the same soft features and the only thing that could separate us besides the gender was the clear height difference. She only reached to my shoulder, while I felt black specks dot the edges of my vision before I stumbled slightly and landed in the firm arms of King Ezuras.