Compline, Fourth Day Before Kalends of May

Unnamed Quarry, Eastpoint, Bahim, Drum

Jack Anselm could not sleep. He was recalling the events from earlier that day. He was recalling the warmth of Kate’s embrace. His face burned. What Jack felt for Kate was not love. He was far too young and far too afraid to love Kate. It was not simply childlike curiosity, either. Perhaps something in between the two.

Kate had taken him to her chambers. She had explained everything to him simply. She was part of a rebellion. The Councillor had declared a war on the rebellion. Jack had been brought to the rebels to help them in their war efforts. And Logan Floyd had not lied. He had killed everyone at the castle.

At this Jack had burst to tears and had once again graciously received an embrace from Kate. Jack still did not understand. He did not understand why there was a rebellion. He did not understand why Kate was there. He did not understand why he was there. He did not understand why his parents had died. But he was weak from sorrow and Kate’s embrace was warm. He wept for a very long time.

And now, laying in his new room deep underground, Jack’s sorrow had subsided somewhat. He was now being attacked by a vivid memory, the memory that attacked him again and again in quiet nights such as these — the memory of the death of Richard, his older brother. Even now he could see clearly before his eyes, Richard, about the same age as Jack was now, laying on the Bed of Ritual, blood flowing from his chest, which was splayed open, a fate that was often met by those who was rejected by a Stone. As the blood trickled down onto the Bed, flowers of various shapes, colours, and sizes sprouted in its path. It was a savagely beautiful sight.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

This same memory had taken him so strongly during his own Ritual that he had almost slipped off the Bed of Ritual in horror, but his own parents were on either side of him, pinning him down to the Bed. When Jack had wept he was unsure if they were tears or blood.

And now Jack remembered the conversation between his parents he had overheard from the corridor, just days after the Ritual.

“You speak of the boy as if he had never existed,” Lady Anselm had said.

“He is dead,” Lord Anselm had said.

“Simply because the Stone had rejected him —”

“Silence!” Lord Anselm had cried. Then a dull thud.

After a moment of silence, Lord Anselm had said, “The boy will buy us our future.”

It was only years later when Jack understood why he had undergone the Ritual, with the same Stone as Richard’s. The Schaher family had fallen, and if the Anselm family failed to take the Stone and secure the newly vacant position as one of the Great Families, one of the other Lesser Families would take their place. Richard had been an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice.

Did Jack despise his parents? No. Despise is too hateful a word for what Jack was feeling. It was simply this — the realisation that he had never been loved.

A better fate, however, than Richard’s. Lord Anselm had forbidden all mention of his name after his death. When Jack had drawn his family in the memory he had shared with Kate, he had originally included Richard, standing beside himself. Yet, with a shaking hand, he had torn Richard out of the drawing. Jack wanted to be loved, and to do so he had to let go of Richard. And yet, he had been met with little that could be called love.

Jack remembered his mother embracing him afterwards. Perhaps that was love.

But now the memory of the warmth of that embrace made Jack think once again about Kate. He was afraid of loving her. He was afraid of losing her. He was afraid of being spurned by her.

And yet there was nobody else he could embrace. Her arms were the only arms in which he could weep.