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Lilia always carried himself with dignity when in the presence of royalty, but today, he grovelled before the Queen, with both his knees on the ground and his eyes facing down, shut tight, and he wished, oh how he wished this fate could’ve fallen on some other poor soul, some other poor souls.
“Queen Maleficia,” he said, where others would have been frozen in fear, his throat was burning in guilt, “They are dead.”
He felt the air pulled into the room. He heard her sceptre violently struck against the ground once. And his weak, weak arms only wrapped more tightly against the egg in his embrace while her emerald flames spread throughout the chamber silently, hauntingly, as if a mindless wraith extending its curse to drown all that is living. His legs were burning inside his armour, he was kneeling in hell, and still he only held the egg tighter, and tighter.
Oh how he wished he could simply lie down and speak not a single word and let the flames claim him and be at rest. But the moment he had chosen to bring this unborn life back home still haunted him whenever he closed his eyes. It haunted him, she haunted him. She was cold and ashen before he could get to her yet he could still feel her fingers on his neck, her breath in his ears. He could still see her embracing her only child with all her love and strength and protection and hope, waiting for someone to find her, find her child, bring him home, and as the child was passed onto Lilia, he thought he must raise the child to the light, as she would’ve done, as she would’ve commanded him to do, if she could’ve, if he had gotten to her in time.
“Her child is still alive,” his voice rose from the silent flames.
The flames stopped. They did not disappear, they only stopped.
“Give him to me,” the Queen was right in front of him.
For the first time since Lilia peeled the child from the mother’s grasp, he allowed his arms to loosen, and with all the gentleness he remembered of her, he stood up and placed the child into the grandmother’s arms.
The Queen held the egg close to her cheek, closed her eyes, and pressed her forehead against it. In ten heartbeats, the flames began to retreat into the ground.
Lilia remembered the mother doing the same. He remembered flying over her playfully and glancing at her gentle visage and picturing the long years ahead where she would continue to clutch her child tight because it was a hope that she had waited for hundreds of years for it to arrive.
He felt his lips tremble, and he covered it with his hand. He had raised the child to the light now, there was no more he could do to honour her now, he thought, now, he could finally rest.
“Lilia,” her voice caught him. He looked up at the Queen’s face and he saw a ghost of her beautiful daughter, “Thank you.”
Now he dropped to his knees, his armour clanged against the ground. And now everything hurt, the burn wounds hurt, the cut wounds hurt, the loss hurt. Of all the things she could have said to let him rest with the dead, she said one thing to make him heal with the living.
The Queen left one kiss on her grandchild’s egg before giving it back to Lilia. “Stay with him,” she said. Her hands were cold. She should have been trembling, and for the same reason as him, she didn’t. She held herself together, she turned around.
“Leave me.”
He bowed and left. He needed to as well. He walked along the hallway. He didn’t bother healing his legs. He walked along the hallway, along the candlelight. He saw ghosts walking before him, a father and a mother cradling a child, a king and a queen cradling an heir. He thought about chasing them, chasing her. He walked along the candlelight, and in the silence of the flames, he remembered the echoes of those very few lives that had been dear to him, that had mattered to him. He remembered her eyes flickering with joy when she had stood right here holding the same child he was holding right now, and oh how he wished she could come back and whisper to him and tell him how to cradle a life the way she did, how to shower the child with hope and joy again the way she did, after all the lights were gone and the hallway was silent.
But he walked.
“I will raise him to the light.”
He walked.
“I will raise him to your light, Malecia.”