The Medievals 2 by Frazier Brothers

Author:Frazier Brothers [Brothers, Frazier]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-08T22:00:00+00:00

{Richard}

Richard stands before his father, soundless words filling the air between them.

The last time Richard stood in this room with his father and mother, Richard had pleaded with them to permit him to join the search for the Descendant. And his father had forbade him from going: “Son, you have the heart of a lion. But the rest of you is not ready.” Now, with the soft moonlight of the nascent morning shaping the faces of his weary parents, roused from their beds at such an early hour, Richard awaits the reprimand he deserves for disobeying his father’s order.

“I am sorry,” Richard says, breaking the silence and hoping his apology will blunt the edges of his father’s rebuke. “I was wrong to leave without telling you.”

As his father considers Richard’s apology, water drips down from Richard’s sleeve and splicks onto the floor at his feet.

His clothes and hair are still soaked after having walked through the portal created by the Lady of the Lake, which took him almost instantly from the Tree of Ten Thousand Roots in the Eternal Forest to the waters that run through the moat that surrounds the walls of the castle. There, Richard and the others were met by the night watchmen, who brought Richard directly to his parents while Wendolyn and the others were escorted to the Great Hall and instructed to wait.

“No,” his father finally replies. “I am the one who was wrong.”

Richard is surprised by his father’s words, and even more surprised by his embrace, his father’s arms wrapping around Richard’s shoulders.

“You are not angry with me?” Richard asks, his brow furrowing.

“I was angry with you, yes,” his father admits, releasing his hold on Richard. “In the days following your disappearance, I found myself furious with you for defying my wishes, for subjugating your mother to such worry for her son.”

Richard looks to his mother, who has tears of relief in her eyes, her fingers steepled over her mouth and nose.

“Had you returned then, I am afraid to think how I would have behaved toward you,” his father confesses. “But, with credit to your mother, I came to realize that I should not have refused your request in the first place. I should have listened to you -- not through my ears, but yours. In my rush to judgment, I overlooked a simple truth: your bones are my bones.

Richard's father pauses, looking to the ceiling, presumably in search of his next words.

The King looks back to Richard and continues: "I, like you, was once the son of a King, and I too wanted to step from the shadow of my father, to prove myself worthy of my place in this world. But I suppose such a great distance from my youth had dimmed my understanding of your desires.”

Richard’s spirit is buoyed by the empathy of his father, and it feels as though the contours of their relationship have shifted during their time apart.

“And the people? What did you tell them regarding my absence?” Richard wonders aloud.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.