SHADOW AND LIGHT (CHIAROSCURO)

A TRUTH FROM THE PAST

Once I finished my meal, Penelope dabbed my stained lips with a silky napkin and took away my plate to the kitchen.

I stood up from my table, faced my stepmother with both of my hands on the table and asked her once more, but with passion, "Stepmother! I'll ask you once again! WHY. ARE. YOU. HERE!?"

She put up a fake pitiful expression, crying as she said, "I... I thought that I could visit one of my sons to see how he was doing so far from home but I see that I was wrong to think such!"

She dabs away her crocodile tears with her black laced handkerchief, "I'll be leaving now."

I looked at her with disdain as she stood up and proceeded to leave the dining room.

But before Queen Patricia could leave the room with her back turned away from me, I stopped her in her tracks, saying...

"Stepmother...! Don't make me laugh, I know you came all the way here just so you could ridicule me in my time of defeat but alas you only found me in my moment of triumph!"

I added, "After all, that pest you sent, Sir Cassian or whatever you call him, I'd already dealt with him but you didn't know that because you were impatient to hear the news from the capital so you came here instead~! Am I wrong...?"

I chuckled, "Haha, you must feel like a fool..."

I noticed her hands squeeze into a fist, “It seems that I've provoked her,” I thought. But then I also noticed a slight dark glow from the black diamond ring on her left hand. “What was that just now?” I thought as I stared at her left hand.

However, before I could ascertain my curiosity, she maniacally faced me, with a face befitting a villainess.

Queen Patricia, the Queen of Gladia turned to me and said without a filter, "You incompetent fucker!”

I was surprised, “EGAD! I didn't know she could curse!” I thought while looking surprised and a bit intimidated.

She walked up to the dining table in a huff, and she puffed, “Do you think that I would leave a single person to deal with you!? Haha, I wonder who's the actual fool!? The prince who has no allies or the queen with allies in this estate, maybe even in this very mansion, watching your every move...!"

*SLAM* She slammed her right hand onto the dining table, and as she did I felt the entire dining table shake and rumble just from her aggression.

It seemed like she was holding back her true strength seeing as the immense force she applied to the table didn't even leave so much as a scratch on the table.

"If I truly wanted to, I would have you snuffed out..." *SNAP* she snapped her finger after threatening me, “...Just like that, but I can't... No, not just yet..."

“'Not yet'? What does she mean 'Not yet'!?” I gulped at the intensity of her words, the intentions and cryptic meaning behind her words made me frown, and I could tell from her face, she wasn't lying at all.

Her words stirred something in me, to the point that at that very moment, I went into a trance and began to recall the past. The past in which I had almost died from poison.

I was just 14 years old when it happened, I was seated by the table in the palace dining room with my father, my stepmother, brothers and sister, we were just about to have our breakfast when my tea was poisoned by a young maid of the royal household.

The very moment I consumed the tea, I lost my vision and was slowly losing all my bodily senses. Luckily, I was saved just in time by the royal physician, Dr Wallace.

When they caught the maid who had done the crime, she stubbornly refused to confess to being the culprit even though all the evidence pointed to her being the culprit. She also claimed that she wasn't in her right mind when she poisoned me.

That maid was starved and tortured for seven days, and yet she still refused to confess to committing the crime of attempted murder or even having a motive to do the deed.

On the eighth day, she requested for me to visit her at the dungeon cell, claiming that she was ready to confess her crimes, but she only agreed to talk to me and me alone.

I came down to the dungeon to meet her in a cell room with a huge iron door which was guarded by two silver knights, and in that cell, was a big cage of iron thorns as its bars, and the door was locked up by a big iron lock. It was in that cage that I saw her for the first time, tortured and abused.

I approached her cage and the conversation began, albeit it was short, it went like this...

"I greet thee, your royal highness," she said to me with a graceful bow even as dishevelled, beaten and malnourished as she looked.

I pitied her, "Please, forget the pleasantries. Just tell me what you need to say to me."

She chuckled lightly, "You surprise me, sire. I had expected you to be enraged with me, your proclaimed poisoner."

"That's because I know you didn't do it. I mean no one, and I mean no one, no matter how strong-willed they were would not rather submit after going through what you went through."

"Hmm... You may be right," she smiles.

I stated in a sad but resolute tone, "Even if you were the true culprit behind the poisoning, there must have been a mastermind behind it. Someone with a motive, someone that would really want me dead. Not a nameless maid, such as yourself. I think you've gone through more than enough torment for the crime."

I looked at her entire beaten body, and said, "Just look at you, a broken arm, bloodied legs, a few broken fingers, removed toenails, bruises and scratches all over your body. And yet, here you stand before me with grace and respect. I can't say you deserved this without any proper interrogation."

I apologized to her, "I'm... Sorry."

She chuckles once more but with a tear down her cheek, "Thank you, sire. You are truly kind. I believe you'll make a great king someday."

I stood there quietly and let her weep.

After a few minutes of weeping, she asked me to get closer to her cage, as she wanted to share some vital information with me. I was hesitant at first but I sooner decided to trust.

So I went closer to her, close enough to touch her and close enough for her to lean into my ears and whisper the truth to me.

She whispered to me all that she knew, "You see, sire. The night before you were poisoned, I was..." From that whisper on that day, I learnt something dangerous about my stepmother and what she truly was.

What that maid told me that day shook me to my core that even today, I fear my stepmother but refuse to show it. And I think it scarred me even more, because just after sharing that truth with me that day, the next day on the ninth day, the maid had ended her own life by hanging herself.

The maid hanged herself by fashioning the clothes on her back as a rope, tying the rope around the ceiling of her cage and finishing the deed, naked.

By the time they had noticed that she hanged herself, she had already passed.

On hearing the news, all that came to my mind was the few last sentences I shared with her before I left her cell...

"What you've shared with me, if it is at all true then it could mean treason! You do understand that, right?" I stated after hearing her whispers.

"Yes, but I have nothing more to lose, I have no family, no home, I am truly alone..."

"...I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she firmly stated.

There was a moment of pause between us before she said, "However..."

"Hmm?" I wondered.

"I had a child."

"A child?"

"Yes, sire. A baby girl, well, by now, I believe she should be a bit older, maybe 11, no maybe 12 years old? Well, it doesn't matter because I believe that I left her in good hands." Her expression looked calm and at peace.

"Is she safe?" I curiously asked.

"Oh yes, I know she is," she assured me with a smile.

With the father of the child on my mind, I had to ask, "I see... Is her father...?"

"Dead? Yes, he died a few months before I bore her, he was a Demi."

"Oh, I see. My condolences..."

She shook her head in disagreement men to my words and said, "No matter, he was a scumbag of sorts so don't feel sorry. All I care about is my daughter's well-being. You see, ever since she was born, I knew she was meant for greatness. That's why, I made a deal with an old friend in high places a long time ago, so that she would be taken good care of."

"What do you mean by greatness?" I asked.

"It's just as I said it, greatness. When I bore my baby girl in the manger, I had a dream on that same night, and in that dream, I saw her glowing like no other, side by side with her partner and master. However, I didn't appear in the dream and that convinced me that I needed to send her into the right hands that would get her to that fated future," she stated with pride."

I felt enraged by the fact she left her child for such a reason, “How... Could you?”

She didn't understand my words, “Pardon, sire?”

My rage took over my words, “As a parent, how could you be so sure that you'd leave your only child in another's hands? Tell me how!?”