Chapter 38 The Knight, The Vow and The Many Graves In His Name
Adrian Valecourt was born on the eve of the worst winter their land had ever encountered.
And his birth, he realized soon, was not vastly appreciated by anyone but his mother, Misha.
She was a gentle woman, with pure white hair as every Valecourt daughter had, and a weak disposition. Her family had been exiled to the North many years ago by the royal family for reasons he had not been sure of, but it didn’t matter.
He had his Mother. She was the only thing that made sense in his life.
His Father on the other hand… he had been a Vessel for his mother… and was also very irritable towards her. He had expected a better life, Adrian realized, getting with her, but there was very little about the North to take pleasure in.
His Mother did though.
She would take Adrian on walks, showing him every flower they would find and name each one, and he would listen, because his mother was the kindest person he had met, and the softest. She was the epitome of nobility, showing kindness to people who didn’t deserve it. His father included.
Her death was not something he expected.
Just one day, she did not wake up.
His father said that the north took beautiful things which was the nicest thing he had said involving her. His father also lost whatever bit of sanity he had left and hit Adrian whenever he had the chance.
On his seventh birthday, the Royal family came to check on Misha, as they did once in a while, and found Adrian almost bleeding to death. They took him back with them, killed his father immediately after and told him to stay, he had to earn his place. And then they made him Eldoria’s personal knight.
She was nineteen to his twelve. And she was as cold as the ice in the north.
He didn’t understand why he was guarding her when he knew clearly that she didn’t need him, but he understood later that he was given to her because no one wanted him— and no one wanted her.
At first, she ignored him, then slowly, she trained him to defend himself, to fight the people who bullied him at the academy. The noble women were cruel and condescending, nothing like Misha, or Eldoria, so naturally, he detested them all and stuck to his Mistress.
And then one day, she woke him up from sleep. He was fourteen, and confused as to why she looked different. She looked insane, and terrified as she shook him, demanding that he stayed by her side no matter what, that she had no true friend and he was all she had.
Adrian didn’t know how he could reassure, especially since it was clear that she was not in the right frame of mind to listen.
And so it happened that Eldoria E Esperanza performed a binding vow— a geass.
That same night, she killed every member of the royal family except her younger brother who had managed to escape before she could come for him. And the War began.
Adrian realized soon after he could not leave. He didn’t even need to join in the fight, she clarified that almost immediately. She just needed him present, like a constant reminder that he existed somehow, and then one day, after she was gone for quite a few years, she returned with a child.
Cassian.
She never explained who his father was, or how it happened. Adrian never thought to question it.
The war fully ended when he turned seventeen, three years after his vows. And that was the day she walked into his room, her brother's head in her hand and covered in blood that he knew was a mix of hers and something else as she said, “I am not certain if I can keep going on my own. They all have to go, Adrian. Every last one of them. You have to get rid of all of them for me,”
He realized soon after that the geass would not allow him to refuse.
The first man was a councilor. Old. Soft. He begged. Promised loyalty, land, gold, anything Adrian wanted. Adrian listened, because he had always been taught to listen. Then he drew his blade and did what the vow required of him.
He learned quickly that the geass did not care how he felt about it.
The second did not appear in his nightmares. The third, tormented him with screams that played even during the day. By the tenth, he threw up and fell ill. By the twentieth, he could pretend like it did nothing to him, and people believed it well enough not to question it.
The first person who had called him out for it though, was Isabella.
He could still remember the first time they met. At the church during Eldoria’s coronation. She was nothing like the other nobility. She was graceful. And soft. And he had found her picking the flowers outside.
Adrian remembered his mother.
He had forgotten her face, but now, looking at Isabella’s, he could see a slight resemblance. Every noble feared him, they had every reason to, but when he met her, she had given him a flower and a soft smile, saying everyone deserved to have a flower even if their hands were stained with blood.
She was the first person to smile at him since the death of his mother.
He decided deep down that he would ignore her at first. He knew more than anyone else that Eldoria suffered from terrible paranoia, especially now when things were still adjusting to the chaos that she had created.
But he could not stop himself from following her to certain places.
Isabella Montague was not liked by the low nobles, and the commoners did not fully understand. She stayed by herself, like a ghostly apparition. Sometimes she took walks, sometimes, he heard, she did nothing but read quietly to herself.
It was only very much later that he had found out that there was so much more underneath the surface that was her.
One of that being a political revolutionary.
Isabella had terrified him then, but she had promised him that she had to do this and she would be safe, but the last night they met, she had let him know that she had made a terrible mistake and no one could be trusted anymore. And that he couldn’t trust her either.
Before she left, he had made her promise to care for herself… because deep down, he was not certain what he would do if anything happened to her.
She promised him that she would.
So watching her… watching her slowly turn as pale as his mother had the same night he had found her when she was finally… when he was finally beginning to believe that he could be of service to her… that she could see him as anything more…
That perhaps, he was not a monster.
He had almost lost it.
But deep down, he knew she knew he would hurt every elf believing they had harmed her, and instead of warning him not to do so, she… instead… with whatever energy she had left, told him he had done a good job.
“Human,” His head snapped upwards with a speed that would have snapped another person’s neck clean from its neck as he faced the elf who was now slightly bowing in front of him, “The girl… she is awake,”
The world shifted.
Adrian hadn’t known what fear was, he never gave himself an opportunity to feel such an emotion, but he had felt it for the hours that her heart had stopped beating, and now, there was something else spreading through his veins that he had never felt before.
He hurried into the tent, noticing the elves that were spread around the place, looking like they were in prayer. He didn’t care enough to check. He hurried to her on the bed, his eyes scanning over her body as she turned to look at him, “Isabella?”
Maeve did not like how weak she felt as she asked, “W-why do I feel like I just kissed something dead?”