Song of Crowns

Episode 13: Fix

Our honeymoon night was shortly interrupted by Adrian’s lingering pain on his stitches. I told him to rest the whole night while I safely nurse him back to health.

I wonder where he got the injury but I don’t want to ruin this moment of being just a wife to my dumb but hopelessly in love with me, husband. Maimie came to my call and handed me first-aid things that I could use while cleaning up his opened wound. She asked if she could be of any assistance but I just waved her off, winking. She giggled and left.

As soon as I patched him up nicely, Adrian moved towards me. He just woke up. “I dreamt of you, Adeline.”

“What did you dream of me?” I asked while putting away the tray of medical equipment. I moved and set myself beside him as he popped open his arms for me to lie on. “Something nasty, perhaps?”

Adrian laughed but instead of agreeing, he just pushed away a lock of my hair away from my face. “I dreamt of you being taken away by someone. I woke up feeling like I lost you.”

“But I’m here now, right?” I tell him, reassuringly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He winces as he inches closer to me. I look at his patched wound and see no blood gushing out. I sigh in relief. “I hope so.” He mutters more to himself.

“May I ask,” I start, shifting for him to have room for his wound to breathe. “Where’d you get that wound? It’s fairly new. I doubt you had it during your childhood days.”

He smirks. I feel like he wants to tell me but is judging the situation. “It’s an accident, really. Nothing really special.”

“Tell me.”

He looks up at the ceiling of our room. “Before my father, Evos, and I left to catch our submarine, we were all sent to a court full of people. That was an hour after the announcement of a flood that reached tremendous heights.” His lip curls up in a way like trying not to relive the memories. “My brothers were still alive back then. Evos was tailing us while we try to get some space to sit on.” I adjust my position so I could see him clearly with the light of the streets illuminating us. “You know my father, right? He’s a senator. A politician. T’was the season of elections and naturally he would run for a higher position, right? A lot of his enemies surely saw this as an opportunity to dispose of him.”

“Oh no,” I whisper, more to myself. I know of political injustices where oppositions usually use violence to win.

“Well, I felt something wrong during that time. Like, we had no guards around us, but no one was really noticing us. As if no one knew they’re in the presence of a public figure like my father, or worse. They really didn’t care if anyone tried to hurt us.” He sighed, laughing slightly. “My brothers had their own families to take care of. They were older than me, of course. So they had to be separated from us when the time of departure came. So when my father, Evos, and I were sent to another departure place, we received some information about some ruckus happening at the other side – where my brothers and their families are.” He winces, probably from the memory. “We were about to go inside the submarine at that time. Then suddenly, we three were attacked and the standby people didn’t budge. They first lunged at Evos who was at the rear and then me. One of the attackers taunted me, saying they killed my brothers. I got mad and tried to fight him but Evos shielded me from getting hit with a knife.”

“Evos did that for you?”

“He did. He’s sort of my best friend and my half-brother so he feels obligated to protect me. But his good intentions were discarded when I felt a pang of pain on my right side. My father shrieked at the sight of me bloodied. Evos knocked the attacker out and my father slapped him so hard. He yelled at him for being incompetent.” He looks away in sadness. I understand that. “I feel bad for Evos. He would do anything for us, yet he gets little to no credit for his efforts.” He continues after shifting his mood so fast I forgot I was listening to a sad story. “I told you it was an accident. I try not to remember it so much. But then this wound is not helping my case, haha.”

I gave him a look he can barely make out under this dark room. “That was no accident, Adrian. You experienced loss and pain at the same time. I feel bad. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Not the same as yours, though. You lost everyone so fast. I still have some of mine left.” He says, trying to compare our situations and lifting up my mood.

“Never compare your pain to mine. It’s still pain and you can feel whatever you want to feel. You witnessed and experienced far more gruesome things than me and I still wonder why you are able to feel happy. I admire that about you.” I say, leaning in to kiss his cheek. “You should rest now. I’m sorry for having you open up something terrible for me.”

He kissed my forehead as a reply. “I can tell you whatever you want me to say, my love.” He says as he drifts off to sleep again, probably going to dream about something that will make him wake up a few hours later.

I feel myself biting my lip at the endearment he called me. My love.

---

Evos accepted my proposal to tour his workplace. As Queen, I should be doing this instead of trying to work inside an office.

“What made you do this, your Majesty?” I shot Evos a look after calling me that, but I let it go as we are in the presence of so many engineers. His team are tailing us behind as they monitor the rows of mechanical equipment that HiveBerg has. They’re probably looking for signs of breaking in the other side of the dome.

I straightened my back and forced a look of regality as I walked side by side with Evos. “You didn’t tell me you were stressing about not being able to get to the other side of the dome,” I told him, coldly.

Evos shakes his head as if he knew Adrian told me. He brushed his tousled hair back with his fingers and faced me as we came to a stop at a corner. The rows in this corner are filled with shelves of monitors and devices that I don’t know how to operate. Evos’ team is far from us that they would only hear muffled sounds of our conversation as the beeping and the humming drowns out our voices.

“Look,” He starts. I feel his stress with his tone but I want to keep my pride on. I hate being in the dark about all sorts of things, he should know that. “I wanted to tell you about this once I have finished hacking the system of HiveBerg. I want to be able to tell you good news, not bad and irrelevant news.”

“Anything is important to me, now, Evos. Whatever kind of news it is, I have to hear it.” I tell him, pointing my finger at his chest. “Now, be a good boy and tell me any updates.” I say turning back and watching his team run their fingers on their pads and on the machines.

I hear him heave another frustrated sigh but he continues on. “We have no real updated news for you, your Majesty. But we have a theory.”

“A theory?”

He nods. I see him rest both his hands on his waist and there I realize that Evos hasn’t cleaned up himself since my reception. He still wore his undershirt and pants that I recognized while he was leaving me at the table with Adrian.

“We couldn’t hack the systems even with manpower. It is a relief that we had many surviving engineers and I.T.s that could work on this and be able to manage the intricate system HiveBerg has. But there is no budging. It is as if even if we tried several times trying to get in, someone tries to keep us out.”

Someone. Does he mean there are others on the other side? “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that there might be others on the other side, your Majesty. They are probably keeping us out. I don’t know for what reasons, but we guess it might be because we came from a different place. I reviewed our ethnicities and most of us, if not all, came from one side of the Earth.”

I don’t know what emotions I should show but I feel a surge of hope when he said that. There are others.

“We should be careful though. Some of our scientists here say that it’s not probably because they don’t trust us. Maybe they’re keeping us out because some of us were exposed to the radiation the nuclear meltdown caused. There are side effects being recognized in our medic tents, Adie.” He says, looking down.

“And you don’t want to tell me these?” I say, complaining.

“I wanted to fix it for you,” He doesn’t look up to me. He feels guilty for keeping this from me. “And besides, you’re busy with your husband. I didn’t want to keep you.”

I hold his chin up so he'd look at me. “No one is going to keep me. Believe me, Evos. I need you more than ever. You have to tell me these things from now on, get it?”

He nods. “I get it.”

I don’t know but after he said that and I turned to where the activity is coming from, I slightly saw him give a faint smirk to himself.

- End -