Chapter 1992: An About Turn – Part 7
With each night, Nila gripped him all the tighter. She could not help the tears that came unbidden to see him so. Before her eyes, she saw the man that she loved beyond all things grind away in his suffering.
She wondered if she was selfish when she said it, but she cared not for more than their village – no more than Solgrim, and perhaps Ernest. If the rest of the country demanded more of Oliver, then let them be ignored. He was still a child truly. Could he not be allowed his peace and his happiness?
Let someone else rule – let Hod take the crown.
Nila sat down again in the snow. She had not walked far, but her legs felt weak. The dread in her heart, and the pounding pain in her head. She knew not what to do. She felt her own mind weakening, as if she was on the point of snapping at any instant.
“Want to run away and see mother,” she said childishly, grabbing a handful of snow. The only thing that stopped her was the thought of Oliver spending a night alone. It made her heart twist over itself. For him to have to confront that terror that he always felt in the quiet of his own room.
She looked up at the sky, and felt a sudden degree of urgency.
She dusted the snow off herself, wondering just how late it was, and hoping upon hope that Oliver had not made his way to bed yet.
They were preparing for war, for their final battle, and also for the future of their country. There was much to discuss, and at Oliver’s doorstep was where they laid all that responsibility. Matters were heavier for him now even than they had been the days before. She had to be there for him, but what was there that she could do?
It seemed at times as if she was the only one who realized what they truly were. Even Oliver seemed to have forgotten. They did not have the years or experience to properly confront what was in front of them. Someone else ought to have done it.
The problem was, there did not seem to be anyone else.
For the magnitude of their problems, there was that same boy, with that same overwhelming sense of responsibility that she had first met all those years ago. The same boy that had frantically made sure that Nila and her family had all the firewood that they needed, even though it was just a throwaway job that Greeves had tossed his way, in order to keep him out of his hair.
That same boy, in the height of tragedy, had stooped down and done that which he least wanted to do. He had put a crown upon his own head, and he had saved them.
In all respects, he was a hero. But it was not herosim that she wanted for him. He had been heroic enough. His impulse towards self-sacrifice only harmed him. If the Stormfront truly needed Oliver Patrick, then it ought to have worked to allow Oliver Patrick to be free, so that he might finally recover.
The walls of Ernest loomed in the distance, as Nila marched through the snow at an admirable and determined pace towards them. Her mind, however, was still clouded beyond belief.
All that was happening, where was her place in it? How could she help a boy that had needed to call himself King? All she could do was wind her arms around him when even came, and the fear would leak out of his body as he attempted to relax. All she could do was show how much she loved him every time they kissed, or lay together. But the strength of her feelings did not seem able to pierce that veil.
She felt weak, vulnerable, useless and afraid. More so than she had in years.
She feared the ridiculing looks that no doubt would come her way increasingly now.
She feared being separated from Oliver. For what future could a peasant ever have with a King? But most of all, she feared for Oliver himself. For as he was, the future present in that dream seemed like an all too real thing. Oliver could not continue to push himself, if he wished to see the next few years properly.
That, more than the troubles in her own heart, was what Nila cared about.
The guards admitted her to the castle gates in an instant. One thing that she had grown to like her red-hair for, when she had hated it so much as a child, was how distinctive it made her. Lady Felder, they called her as she entered. They could tell who she was, even from a distance.
As she walked through that quiet torchlit city, feeling its tension – a city very much on the brink – the soldiers on duty made sure to salute her, as if she indeed was a woman of station.
She kept her head high, but it tore into her heart. The unworthiness that she felt. All she had accomplished was still a candle in the wind compared to that necessary to proudly call herself the woman courting the Patrick King.
Insufficient to the highest degree.
She knocked on the door, and in an instant, Oliver saw it open.
Oliver the boy she remembered, not Oliver the King. The different look in his eyes, that saw not just the future, but so too the strength of the past.
The complicated feelings that Nila found in her heart vanished in an instant. Action overtook thought, as emotion came to the forest. She reached out to him, and wrapped a gentle hand around his neck, so that she might kiss his forehead.
“You have worked far too hard, silly boy,” she told him gently.
Mutely, did Oliver nod. In the morning, when he had his strength, he would have waved her away. But in the darkness, those eyes remembered, and they carried the weight of that which was not so easily dismissed. The impossible burden required to be that which he was at the age he was. Seeing him in such a state, and knowing all that he had endured, she found it didn’t surprise her.