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Lydia had been standing in front of the prince’s door for more than an hour. She had raised her hand several times, but couldn’t bring herself to knock. She could hear faint noises from the other side of the wood panel. Prince Magnus was probably sorting paperwork and writing letters – that’s what he always did when the knights were out of the castle, because when they were here, it was impossible to put him to work. His father often reprimanded him for this lack of investment in his duty, and for his involvement with the knights, something he deemed unworthy of a prince. But Magnus, for the most part, did as he pleased. They had grown up together, all of them, and had forged bonds of friendship and love long before they understood the reality of their social conditions. The knights were his family. He wouldn’t part from them.
In all this, Lydia was an outsider. She had arrived in the kingdom for the sole purpose of forging an alliance by marrying one of the knights, and she had discovered with great surprise the closeness of the prince with his subjects. With one of them in particular.
That’s why she couldn’t knock on the door.
He hadn’t come out, for the knights were due to come back in the evening. He didn’t know they were already here, because she had offered to be the one to tell him. The others were too shocked, in a daze of sadness and hurt they wouldn’t come out of for a long time. She was, too, but she was an outsider. She wasn’t one of them. They were already hurting so much. She could do that for them. It was the only thing she could do.
And yet, she couldn’t knock on the door. Because she knew.
They all knew, she believed. When she had been married to Sir Alexander Lightwood, she was still healing from the tragic loss of her first love, and she had actually been relieved to understand that no love would grow between them. They were close to each other, she liked him a lot, as well as his siblings and the other knights, but she loved another, and he did too.
It was one of those things everybody more or less knew, but never talked about. Sir Jace and Lady Clary, awfully close for brother and sister, Lady Isabelle, stubbornly refusing to marry anyone, and her squire Simon, a simple commoner she still spent most of her time with.
Prince Magnus and Sir Alexander.
She had seen it almost immediately. She had recognized their feelings as her own, a love bright and all consuming, that she had lost forever and still couldn’t part from. Maybe that was the real reason why she had decided to go to Magnus. Because she knew.
Alexander, Isabelle, Clary and Jace, they were the best knights of the kingdom, it was common for them to go out, the four of them, for sensitive diplomatic matters and dangerous missions, on behalf of their king. They were well known in town and in the surrounding villages, as protectors and fighters, as heroes.
There would be public funerals, a long period of mourning, and she had to knock on the door.
How tragic life was, how twisted and unforgiving, how unfair. She remembered waiting for the return of the army, back in her own kingdom, of watching the column in the horizon, waiting impatiently for her knight to return. How fast she had understood, seeing the faces of her betrothed’s friends, how quickly everything had been torn apart, shattered into a million pieces.
And it was happening all over again. An hour ago she had been conversing nicely with her maid, while composing a letter to her family. She didn’t have an official title of diplomat, but she still played the role of correspondent between their kingdoms. At the end of the missive, she was writing about herself, just a little, about her life and her husband.
Now she would see her parents very soon, for they would come to the funerals.
They had never talked about it, Alexander and her. It was an unspoken understanding between them. She was so scared when they had met, scared to be married so soon, scared about the kind of husband he would be, but she had never had anything to fear from him. He must have been scared too. Maybe that’s why they got along so well – a mutual relief, because they had been lucky, in the end, to be paired together. She would have been willing to give him a child, were it required of them, but they agreed nothing more would come out of their union. She spent most of her nights alone, and she knew why, knew where he was. He never said, but she knew.
She was happy that he was happy, she was happy for them, it was a small reprieve in their life, and they deserved it.
She knocked on the prince’s door.
“I’m coming,” she heard him say, and she wanted to tell him no. No, don’t come, stay where you are, behind that door, the world can’t reach you, stay safe and happy.
He opened the door. A smile began to form on his face when he saw her – despite everything, they had built a strong friendship, over the past few years – but he noticed her expression immediately.
“Lydia, what’s wrong?”
That failure of a smile, it was the last trace of happiness she would see on his face for a long time, and that was the thing that finally broke the dam. That simple, terrible thought, that she was the bringer of such terrible news, she would wipe the smile off his face, never to be seen again, in the near future. Tears filled her eyes. She gasped.
“Lydia? Lydia, what is it?”
He was panicking, and she could only imagine what was going on in his head, what terrible scenario his mind was conjuring. Did he dare imagine this one, or was it too awful a thing to consider? She was crying silently, her body motionless, arms hanging limply at her sides. She wanted to hide her face in her hands and to curl in on herself, but she couldn’t. She had to stand straight and strong, because he would need her support.
“The knights have returned,” she said in a broken voice. His eyes widened. He had to know what she was going to say. It was just a matter of who. Did he entertain the terrible thoughts she had had herself when she had seen the lifeless body, covered by a cape? Was he thinking like she had, “please, not him"? Thoughts to be guilty of later, had it not been him, of being relieved that another had died? But there was no guilt to have. Because it was not another.
“It’s Alexander.”
The world shattered into a million pieces.