CHRONICLES OF AADYA

Episode Forty-one

AUTHOR

The barrier was latched as soon as Alisdair and Aadya were hurled into a cell. It was something inevitable, they had perceived it since the instant the strategy was decreed.

The guard threw the key to another before parting. Aadya hissed and shifted back to relax while Alsidair's eyes travelled to the small window that was barely enough to contain a small raccoon. The cell was a hollow cube of hard rocks, one way in, a tiny window and the ground was scarcely covered with hay. It was chilly.

"My love" Alisdair called, squatting before her "Remember, whatever happens next, I'm here"

She perked up to him and gently nodded and the young fella cupped her face before leaning in to press a gentle kiss on her forehead.

The clang of the cell door echoed through the hall as they reopened. "The queen demands your presence," The guard says as he extended the door.

Alisdair bowed his head and stepped through the steel doors and out onto the cracked concrete floor of the cell's hallway.

Through the heavy doors of the cell keep, there came a large hallway filled with rows of guards with armour and colours so flamboyant they could distract one’s attention from the route ahead. Though eventually, came forth a large door with two guards by its sides who immediately pulled it open, granting them access to the immense hall. The room smells of gold, the hard odour plating their tongues. The sunset from the teardrop-shaped windows reflects off the treasure at all angles, filling the room with a warm, golden, glowing, glimmering light.

Finally at the end of the hall, upon a squared, padded, high-backed throne, robes glistening, rings glittering, crown gleaming, there sat a queen.

Aadya inhaled and began to take a few steps in though Alisdair was stopped by two guards. On cue Aadya also stopped but the wolf-blood male signalled her to continue. A slight nod and she turned and started up her journey to the front of the throne.

“Leave us” The queen commanded and the rest of the guards began to depart “You shall remain” She directed to the guards by the entrance. Finally, the large door was pulled close only leaving the two guards by the sides of Alisdair.

“You look well. I'm stunned to know you have lived to this day. Though you do quite seem to have changed”

“The same goes for you. Though yours was quite shocking, I was never dead but you were supposedly dead” She returned with an unbothered look.

The queen lightly chuckled “Was I?” Her eyes lifted in an amused yet strong and yielding way. Aadya didn't see thoughts of her acting as though she wasn't pleased with all. Her face remained firm.

“Cheer up,” The queen tells her, rising from her throne “What breaks us can build us”

“You're not in the position to say that to me”

“Oh, come on. Don't be hard on yourself. Perhaps a nice family reunion will be good”

Alisdair grunted lowly, “Gods, I hate family reunions” he mumbled.

“That’s the problem... I'm not here for a family reunion”

“Then what are you here for? To tell me to my face about how I had abandoned you? Of course, that can't be the reason” She waved her left hand dismissively and moved from her position, just a step forward and then she discontinued, watching Aadya.

“Tell me, who is the fella there? It seems you got yourself a prominent fellow”

The Queen's words initiated the first wave of anger in Aadya, it was shallow not demanding. Her jaw was slightly put up “You don't deserve to know” She let out and the queen seem to wipe it off as mere words.

“Then, let's have a feast. A reunion it is”

"I just don't think any normal person will be in the mood to dine after watching another being killed for a thing they were born as" Aadya returned which was unexpected heeding the way the Queen had ceased.

Gracefully she turned to her, though there was nothing graceful about her act. She rather seems unaffected by the girl's utterance. As though the words were of no relation to her. "It was a simple just for what the people want" She let out with a slight motion of her hand.

Aadya breathed, not believing the words she had just attended to. No such evil should be uttered with such unbotheredness, yet the Queen managed to make it appear as though she had just uttered a mere word. "What the people want? Or what you want? They are born of magic and they practised only what they were born of, which doesn't require the death penalty. Did they hurt anyone?"

Aadya's voice began to quicken up with every sentence that left her mouth. This wasn't the mother she knew, this woman right before her can't really be her mother.

"Answer me, mother!" Her voice roared with outrage.

"You have no idea what magic is like. That good magic you see could turn evil in a blink" The queen upheld.

"So you will kill everyone born of magic, mother?" She uttered. Her voice was no longer raising as the question had come forth in a low weak tone. Rage began to build up in her with every single second that the answer was delayed.

The queen took a step down. "It is not I who kills them but the law of Alpagu"

The young witch felt weak by her word, she watched the queen, trying to comprehend if that had actually come from her "I can't believe you're the same mother I had known. The one that had raised me–"

"You have no idea what it was like"

"What?" Aadya's breath seized as those words escaped the queen's lips and all Alisdair wanted was to dive his claws into the queen's chest and rip off her heart.

"You have no idea what you took from me... All I ever wanted was to be heard. But you came and began to crush every little hope I had" The queen's words pierced Alisdair's heart, he felt the pain but that was much far from what Aadya was feeling at the moment as she was left with no word in her throat to defend herself. She stood, silent, gapping at the queen who had just torn her heart apart.

"I tried to make you be like the rest of your mates but you chose a different path. The path that took everything from me. And to get back what I have always wanted, I took flight"

"You've no idea how much that action of yours caused me" Aadya's bittered voice whispered in pain and the only reason Alsidair was yet to do anything was because of Aadya's words.

"I regretted the day I made love with your father. Every single time I see your face it reminds me of him. He had told me that he would rule the world, with me by his side. But that's the story being told to a fragile maiden born of a witch but never a witch. And then Hrafen found me, and when I thought everything was better, you came and destroyed it all"

"Huh?"

Aadya's body stilled as though the air was suddenly captured by the gods. Alisdair's eyes traversed to the window but he wasn't certain of what he was aiming at. All he cared for was to escape the place with her and never return.

"Hrafen was never your father" She finally heaved the word. And Alisdair took a step forward only to be interrupted by the guards. Some humans just make him want to murder people.

"I had desired to—"

"I don't care about what you want, mother!" Aadya's voice came with much rage that finally uttered the expression on the queen's face. "Do you hear me? I don't care!" Her rage pounded in her like a drumbeat. Aadya was gone. These, everything was beyond all her thoughts and processes at the moment. She couldn't start to believe that the very man she had lived these two decades of her life calling father was never hers, to begin with.

"The most valuable piece of my existence and you, you kept that part of me hidden? You made me the black sheep, you know the– that nobody wants"

She surged forward but ceased in her track "Look at me!" She shouted, "Look!" Her hand moved as though she was about to rip her own heart "You abandoned me with a man that isn't my father, and you say the world had treated you badly? But you mother, you were the world to me but what did you do? You left me with a father that crushed every memory of my childhood. In your entire life, you had not even a glimpse of what I went through! I was the recipient of his cruelty. And your cruelty!"

"Aadya!" Alisdair called, hoping she'd fight the chaos of her rage, but she was already consumed by it. Almost choking on her rage.

"You lied to me, mother! Every of my childhood was a lie! A lie to hide your own transgressions because of your own desire! My whole life I sought the approval I was denied by the man I thought was my father. Your single action turned me into the child he hated. Look at me! You rant and rage about the things I took from you, but you, mother, you are the author of everything I am. I never wanted a life like this. I never asked to be born!”

“I am your mother! I expect you to respect me!”

"You ceased to be my mother the day you made me believe you were dead!” Aadya yelled back and a force of energy burst through, clashing with everything on its way.

The queen gasped as she felt the surge. It wasn’t the type that destroys everything on its way. It is a force that reminds one of the aura in the room, one which the queen, Collete, knew so well.

Aadya could feel the energy coursing through her veins, her heart began to race and her breathing came fast and shallow. Yet consumed by her pain she allowed it to flow out of her “You hurt me... it hurts me knowing that you feel less affected by the pain you caused me. Every scare on my flesh was inflicted because of you”

It became a moment of total mindfulness. Everything else fades, and it was only her and the queen before her “...And that pain remained with me. You don’t deserve to be loved” The energy was channelled to her arms and a force of raw blue flame drifted in both arms. “You don't deserve to be called a mother!”