CISCO
It was the second time in my life I'd held my best friend's lifeless body in my arms tightly just to make sure she was still breathing. The first time she'd found me after General Poplar's voice rang in my ears: "General! The Prince!"
During my first moment of clarity, I saw her hovering over me as if she were a breathtaking apparition meant to deliver me from this life to the next. Her silhouette was familiar, and I stretched toward her, until I heard Lura's voice, gruff from hours of calling orders to her soldiers and battle cries.
"You're not allowed to die," she ordered as she knelt beside me. I'd sustained the kind of wound that made struggling to survive not feel worth it. But when I heard her nonnegotiable order, I couldn't help but obey. "Not unless it's by my hand," she finised in a more gentle tone.
As I roused, her glowing white eyes served as a beacon for me to follow home. Just as I sat up, her eyes lost focus. As her white eyes faded back to a pale blue, her eyes rolled back into her head, and she toppled on top of me.
"Lura?" I shook her, gently at first, and then more violently. "Lura!" I searched the battlefield for Sanna. She wasn't far away. She was fending off Vydonian soldiers so Lura could heal me without being attacked.
"Sanna!" I wasn't proud of the frantic, shrill tone I took as I called her name.
"Get her back to camp!" Sanna yelled over her shoulder as she swung at someone's neck.
I searched for a wound. She was drenched in blood and brain matter — I'd watched her burst skulls like bubbles for hours — but I couldn't find a single wound on her.
"Get. Her. Back. To. Camp," Sanna grunted as she fell back to wake me up from the nightmare I was living in where Lura was dead. "She loses her energy when she heals," she hissed, pulling Lura off my lap so I could stand and hoisting her up so that her arm was stretched over Sanna's shoulder. "If you let someone hurt her while she's unconscious I'll kill you myself, crown prince or no."
Sanna bared her teeth at me, and as she did, blood from her face ran into her teeth, and it wasn't her own blood.
"Yes, ma'am," I said, slinging Lura over my shoulder.
"This battle is forfeit without her," Sanna growled. I wasn't entirely sure why I was always on her bad side, but I'd learned in the year I'd known her that she was someone to be feared. "Prove to me you deserve surviving this," she said, and shoved me back toward camp. I watched her jump back into the fray for only a moment before I sprinted through the chaos while supporting Lura's weight on my shoulder.
It was surreal that a person who could crush skulls felt so small and fragile in my arms. Her armor was clunky and awkward but I fought my way toward the Calidonican camp.
Once I passed the edge of the battlefield I entered the forest. The Calidonican camp was a couple of miles through the forest. I stopped once to shift her to the opposite shoulder, and as I did I smelled her lavender scent underneath the metallic tang of blood.
I smirked to myself. She liked to claim that Baruuk was the one who dressed her in "extravagant" — by her definition — jewelry, furs and leathers, but I knew she didn't wear her lavender oils for Baruuk. It was adorable to see such a focused general divert some of her energy toward making herself smell like a flower.
By the time I got back to the camp her body felt like bricks in my arms. But I made it back to her tent and placed her gently onto her cot. With her brow smooth and unbothered, her mouth no longer downturned, she looked like a girl. She was only eighteen at the time, but it was easy to forget. It was easy to forget that I was only twenty.
Sometimes Zanth had to shake me until I came to my senses. "You're only twenty," she'd say until I got out of my head and back into reality. "You don't need to have everything figured out at twenty."
Zanth was intense — she put Lura to shame most of the time. Lura was intense, but she also had this quiet stillness about her when no one else was watching that Zanth never had.
As second in line to the throne, Zanth knew all about the expectations of an heir, but my father never put the kind of pressure on her that he did on me.
Lura was so still, it was frightening, but her chest still rose and fell in an even rhythm. My own breastplate was gone. The soldiers who had stabbed me had slashed at the braces and ripped the breastplate from my chest. It was rare that someone could beat me so completely. In fact, it had never happened before. And it was terrifying.
But I was alive, thanks to Lura, so it only seemed fair that I made her comfortable while she regained her strength. How did I never know she lost energy when she healed? She hid it well.
I gently but efficiently undid the straps on her armor, laid her back on her cot and covered her in her wool blanket.
There was no way I would leave her alone unprotected, even in her own camp, so I stayed by her side until she woke up.
And that's what I would do the second time I held her lifeless body in my arms.
"Give her to me," Sanna hissed, and tried to pull her from my arms. When I didn't let go, and just stared her down, the mutual loathing palpable between us, she backed down. I slowly stood with Lura in my arms and carried her back to her tent.
I could feel Sanna at my back, sword drawn, but I ignored her. It wasn't that I loathed her, I just hated how she made me feel about myself. She always made me feel less than Lura. Like I didn't deserve her friendship.
Maybe I didn't.
But that didn't change the fact that I would not walk away from Lura without a fight. I could tell Sanna could sense that, which is probably why she tolerated me carrying Lura like a child in my arms away from the dining hall.
As we walked through the crowd of onlookers, most of their jaws were dropped. Some of the more romantic soldiers had eyes wide with tears, hands covering their gaping mouths.
I was pretty sure Lura was the last person in Calidonica to realize she had feelings for me. Whereas I'd been aware of my feelings for her for a while at that point, it seemed she'd only become aware when she believed she'd never see me again.
It was better late than never.
When we reached Lura's tent, I set her gently on her cot as I had the first time this had happened. Except this time, as soon as I set her down, Sanna's sword was at my throat. I slowly stood from setting her down and raised my hands in surrender.
"Explain," Sanna growled.
"I've always respected you, Sanna," I said, not wanting to get into what happened between Lura and I, but knowing it was unavoidable. "You look out for her when no one else does."
Sanna's scowl deepened. "I have four younger sisters. No matter what your lot in life, I know a nineteen year old girl is barely more than a child at the end of the day."
Sanna didn't look to be older than twenty-three or twenty-four, but I figured that probably was old enough to view a nineteen year old as barely an adult. In Calidonica many weren't considered adults until age twenty.
I ran my hands through my hair, knowing my curls were already frizzing from the drizzling rain. "You heard everything." She had been standing right behind Lura as we fought, sword drawn and ready to step in and defend her Grand General.
"An alliance with Vydon, you were sent to kill or recruit her, and you are planning on overthrowing Baruuk?"
I dragged my hand down my face and asked, "Can we sit?"
Sanna nodded her head toward Lura's office at the front of the tent and took Lura's seat at her desk. I sunk into the chair across from her and opened the bottle of liquor on Lura's desk. Two gulps would give me the fortitude I needed to endure what came next, because it would not be good, I could already tell.
"Explain from the beginning," Sanna said, folding her hands on top of the desk. If it were anyone else, and if I didn't know Sanna came as close to loving Lura as anyone but me and her sister ever had, I wouldn't have explained. But because it was Sanna, I rested my elbows on the desk and told her everything.
I told her of my father intending to break the alliance, which I'd failed to do. I told her of wanting to kill Baruuk for what he'd done to Lura and Hetty, and how I'd failed to do that as well. I told her I suspected I didn't know most of the things Baruuk had done to her, or the extent to which he'd done them. I told her I didn't understand fully how they affected her either. But I knew beyond a doubt that Baruuk deserved to die for the way he'd treated her.
"As a child, I thought she was the luckiest girl — to be chosen by the king to live as his daughter in the palace. As I got older, I realized it wasn't so simple."
I recognized so much of what I'd been through with my father in her. My father and Baruuk were very different people. My father knew how to put immense pressure on me to be the best king Espazota ever had without realizing that I'd only ever wanted to be a good son.
For Lura, her relationship with Baruuk was far more complicated. There were rare instances where she stood up for herself, but otherwise she was the picture of reverence and submission. But I saw how it cost her. My biggest regret regarding Lura was that I hadn't said something sooner. We wrote pages long letters about the most basic topics but I never asked if she was okay.
I'd wondered plenty of times, but asking if she was okay would imply I cared far more than was comfortable to admit. Not when I knew she didn't feel the same. And even when I did see she felt the same but didn't realize it, I knew her relationship with love was complicated. I could see it in the way she looked at Baruuk, like she wasn't sure whether she owed him everything or if it was him who owed her everything.
"You care for her," Sanna said, eyes narrowed. She didn't seem affected by my fractured sentences and frequent pauses to collect my thoughts. I silently nodded.
Even saying it out loud was terrifying. Because if I said it out loud, I would have to admit that my loyalty was divided. My love for my people and my love for Lura were magnetic forces that pulled me in different directions. Because I couldn't love the heir to a rival kingdom without forfeiting my investment in the kingdom I would inherit.
It was a blessing that our nations had remained allied all those years. My friendship with Lura shaped me into the man I'd become. She'd challenged me to be better, to outdo her. And just when I thought I had, she outdid me. When I first met her when we were kids, I didn't understand why she cried all the time. But as I grew older, and her tears were replaced with stoicism and silence, I understood that she had to pretend to be something she was not. And I felt the same way.
"I do," I admitted, looking down into my lap. "More than I should."
I heard Sanna lean back in Lura's chair. "I always thought you were nothing but a distraction to her."
I shrugged. "I have been. But not on purpose." I still couldn't meet her gaze. "If we were the average boy and girl, we'd spend our time wasting time. Surely you can understand that there has to be some room to live between duty and legacy."
"Lura has never been and will never be the 'average' girl." The pair of white glowing eyes that appeared in my dreams flashed before my eyes.
"No. She's not."
I finally found the strength in me to meet Sanna's eyes. The truth of why I never liked Sanna, the reason she made me feel less than, was because I knew she didn't believe me to be worthy of Lura's friendship, or to be the one who captured her heart.
"I will leave your fate up to Lura," Sanna said, standing from her desk, her hand resting on her sword. "But I will advocate for sending you back to Espazota."
I nodded glumly. "As you should."
She jagged her head back toward Lura's private quarters. "Stay with her. It may be the last time you see her for a while." I stood, shocked and grateful. Maybe Sanna had more faith in me than I realized. "Don't make me regret it."
I shot to my feet. "You won't regret it."
As soon as she left, I returned to Lura's bedside and took her hand in mine. The dirt under her nails contrasted against her pale skin.
"I forgive you, Lura. Now I'll ask that you forgive me," I whispered. I hadn't trusted her with the truth. She wouldn't have taken it well, but clearly she was unwilling to kill me. I should have taken my chances. She deserved to know the real reason I was there, not half truths.
If how I had behaved in any way resembled something Baruuk had accused me of being, I deserved the beating. I knew after she injured herself in the woods that reality was blurring for her, and I was sure Baruuk was wielding me like a dagger, stabbing her all over with lies. But I didn't know how to broach the subject without completely pushing her away.
I stayed, huddled over her, lost in thought over what awaited me when I returned home, until she stirred.
When her eyes fluttered open and her eyes focused on me, her first words were, "You stayed."
I pressed her knuckles to my lips. I smiled in a way that had earned me many double takes, knowing it secretly undid her. "You can't get rid of me that easily."
Walking away, at least for a time, was inevitable. But I would always fight my way back to her, as long as she let me.