I dropped Theron’s body when I was thrown off the wall. But I did not have the time to be mad, to argue, or to fight back. Every second matters. I can’t waste any more of it. I was about to reach for Theron when the Knights suddenly appeared and blocked my way.
“Get the hell out of my way if you don’t want to get hurt!” I said in a low voice, but the warning behind it was impossible not to notice.
“Alex, please stop this-“
“You don’t understand, Nathan!” I raised my voice as I pointed my finger at him. “You will never understand how much Theron means to me! For the past years, he had been a father, a brother, and a best friend to me. You have no idea how much his presence had helped me survived the nightmares, the memories, the painful mornings, and those damn cold nights! You don’t know how hard I struggled, you don’t know how many times I wanted to give up and just die, but I would stop time and time again because of Theron’s preaches, because of him who continued to believe in a worthless King like me. I had nothing and in his eyes, I was still his King, and he remained my faithful servant. I was so close to giving up on myself but he never gave up on me.”
My chest heaved as tears ran down my cheeks. “I will never be able to accept it if I would lose him like this knowing that he did this to help me because he was fool enough to think that I could still be saved. You don’t know the fear that was crawling inside me right at this very minute. I am so afraid to lose another special person in my life again. I don’t know what I would do if I would fail to save him.”
“You are right,” Nathan replied while nodding. “We haven’t seen each other for so long that’s why there are really many things that I don’t know about you now. I know one thing, though. Theron is dead, Alex. But his spirit could still be here,” he added, his eyes were pleading as if he was trying to make me understand his point. “You were like a son to him. He had served you the best he could because he loved you. Do you think he would be happy to see you like this tonight? Theron did not risk his life to come in this mortal world just to watch you die in trying to save him!”
“Shut up-“
“Don’t let him die in vain! They are killing us one by one, Alex! This is a critical time where we could die any moment. So many lives had been sacrificed just for the mess that our family started. But I came here together with your soldiers because we knew that just like before, just like how you gave it your all to fix the problems in Arameth in the past, you would also be able to find a way out of this again. Because like Theron, we have faith in you, too. Because you are the great Alexandros Sormont, the wisest king of all.”
Nathan forced a smile. “You are the only one among us who always knew how to give solutions to whatever problems that come our way. You are the only one who had the power and the wisdom to fix the clutter in Arameth. We are utterly lost without you in Arameth, Alexandros. But if you fall apart like this, then what would happen to us when you are the only reason why we are trying so desperately to hold on? You are our hope, Alex.”
I clenched my hands. “You believe in me way too much, Nathan. That’s your problem. Not mine.”
“Don’t say that. I know that out of all the people here, you were the one who suffered the most. You had lost so much. But Alex, I want you to know that even if we were in Arameth, even if we were in the same prison, even if our cells there were next to each other, even if we hear each other’s voice, we also had a tough time. We had also lost something. Like you, I had also lost the special people in my life.” Nathan’s voice cracked. “My wife and my child died, Alex.”
My eyes widened. I did not know that. “I… I’m sorry.”
“I watched how they died as the Armethians attacked them,” he added as if he did not hear me. “I watched them breathe their last breath. I watched my only daughter with tears in her eyes while asking me why it had to happen to all of us. And I could not do anything because they were in another cell. The Knights and I who are in front of you now had also suffered. We may have suffered differently, but does it really matter? Does it matter who suffered more? This is not a contest of pain. And if this was a contest, then maybe you would be the winner. But surely,” he smiled bitterly. “The rest of us here would rank as second place.”
I could not utter a goddamn word. I just feebly leaned on the wall as tears kept streaming down my face. But my head was in a complete disarray. There was chaos inside me. I have so many questions. One of them was why so many of us had to pay for my father’s sins? Our parents screwed up big time, yes. But why must their children had to keep taking the fall? I had already paid an immense amount in the past. I have already went through so much. But why did they have to keep doing this to me?
I laughed miserably. “This does not make sense. It was not like we wanted to live. It was not like we wanted to be born in the first place."