Brotherhood Saga 03: Death (28 page)

whom, by all measures, had filled the hole in his heart that his adoptive father had once filled
, was comparable to stabbing needles into one’s eyes and expecting them not to bleed.

You know what you want to do,
his conscience whispered.
So why not do it?

Crying
would only show weakness he had no need for, particularly in an hour when he was still attempting to recover the loss of one friend and the disappearance of another.

“I should be happier,” he finally sai
d. “But… I’m not.”

“It
’s understandable, son. You’ve just lost two friends.”

“One
friend,” he corrected. “Odin just ran off.”

“
Do you know where?”

“To the Abroen Forest,” Nova sighed. “Likely to find the Elves.”

“Does he even know how to navigate those lands?”

“I can only hope he found a map or ran into someone who could help him.”

In the moments of silence that followed—when Ketrak waved his hand over the candle as if to warm his palm—Nova wrapped his arms around his torso and rocked himself in his seat. He swayed in tune to the harmonic silence that placated the room like some dark entity in an attempt to calm his shattered nerves. When that seemed not to work, and when Ketrak offered him a look that could have shattered glass, he settled back into the armchair as far as he possibly could.

Ketrak surely wouldn
’t judge him, would he?

Of course not,
he thought.
He’s never judged me.

Then again, neither of them could forget the night before he
’d left his wife for nearly three years—when, out of the blue, a vision had told him to find a boy in a tower far away in order to save not only himself, but his family who could also be harmed by repercussions. Had that been why Ketrak had been spared, saved in a moment of grace from an entity that had swallowed a town whole, and had that been why Katarina had held on, despite his absence and the fact that he had basically abandoned her?

With a shake of his head, Nova stood and turned to make his way back to the bed, but stopped midstride. “Father,” he said.

“What is it, Nova?”

“You don
’t…”

“Don
’t what?”

“Think I
’m weak, do you?”

“You
’re a lot stronger than you’ve led yourself to believe,” Ketrak said, stepping up behind him and clasping a hand across his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Nova. Things will work out. They always do.”

They always do.

Nova closed his eyes.

If that were the
honest truth, then he might have hope for his future.

“Nova,” Katarina said. “Can we talk about something?”

After rounding the courtyard and the field that lay beyond it, they crossed over into the territory where the pond and what eventually led out into the harbor was. Eyes cast toward the horizon, hands limp at his sides, Nova turned his attention to his wife just in time to see a small group of pages wander into the castle from the training grounds, all of which appeared much too young to have been placed within a war-like situation.

When his wife did not press the matter further, Nova reached back, took her hand, then led her out and onto the dock that spanned the small lake. There, at the end, they stood looking out at the pond and the distant river beyond it, voices silent but hearts all the louder.

What could she want to talk about?
he thought, all the more nervous about the innate possibility that something could be wrong.

Instead of responding directly, he set his arm across her
shoulders, then pulled her against his side, sighing when a brief wind flowed from the distant north and disrupted the hair on their heads.

“We can talk about anything,” he finally said.

“I know this might be a bad time to bring it up,” Katarina sighed, lacing her hands together before her and bowing her head to look at the planks beneath their feet. “But… well…”

“What is it, honey?”

“I’ve been thinking about this for the past little while. Well, I should say, the last
long
while, if you want me to be completely honest.”

“All right.”

“You’ve been gone for such a long time, Nova. I… I know it was for a good reason, because what you did for that boy… man, I should say… that was something remarkable. Not many people are willing to help a complete stranger in that way, especially not someone who may not be real.”

What is she getting at?

“Anyway,” Katarina continued, lacing her arm around his waist and turning so the two of them stood chest-to-chest. “I’m sure you’ve been thinking about this for a while to, but… I want to start a family.”

A family?

Immediately, the image of his wife holding a baby in her arms assaulted his vision, erasing any form of the concrete world in favor of a façade of golden light that enshrouded everything within its hues.

In her arms, wrapped tightly in a blue blanket and resting against her chest, was the child he knew was already a boy.

Look at him,
Katarina’s vision-self said.
Our son.

Nova blinked.

The world returned to its normal hue.

Almost unable to comprehend the fact that he
’d just experienced a flashback of a vision that had happened three years ago, he wrapped his arms around his wife, closed his eyes, then bowed his face into her hair, where he inhaled the faint scent of shampoo and sweat that exuded off of her scalp and tried his hardest not to let the tears burn down his eyes.

The thought that occurred to him shortly thereafter was enough to shake his entire core.

Could they really raise a child in the midst of all this tragedy, all this war?

Who says we can
’t?

The government, the law, the fact that in possibly a few months
’ time he would be in the front lines awaiting not only the next wave of war, but the arrival of his first-born—all realities led to the conclusion that even trying to conceive a baby was a dangerous and emotionally-hazardous idea, but to actually have one in light of everything that had recently happened?

She wants a family,
he thought, tightening his hold around her body.
But what do I want?

He, too, desired something to call his own. A wife, a son, a father-in-law that would one day smile upon his
first grandchild and sing of folklore that could easily be established within the history of mankind—these were the things that men dreamed of when they transitioned from boyhood and became the people they were after the eve of their sixteenth birthday, the things that led many to court young women to win not only their affections, but their hands. These things, as simple and magical as they were, came not without consequence, and for that, he could not truly say that he wanted to risk his life and heart for something that could very easily go wrong.

“Nova?” Katarina asked.

“I’m not sure what to say,” he replied, awestruck and a bit dumbfounded by the fact that he would soon have to answer.

“You don
’t know what to say?” she laughed. “Nova, why—“

“There
’s just so much going on right now. I don’t know—“

“You don
’t know
what,
Nova? That you’ve lost everything you could have possibly imagined?”

“I didn
’t lose you,” he whispered.

“That
’s not the point,” Katarina replied, breaking apart from him and walking backward, toward the end of the dock and spreading her arms out and about her. “The point is, Nova, that you deserve a life more than anything else in the world.”

“I
’ve had a life.”

“You
’ve had
a journey!”
Katarina cried. “You haven’t lived at all! You were gone no more than a month after we were married!”

“You know why I had to go,” he said, stepping forward. “Please, Katarina, don
’t—“

“Don
’t
what,
Nova?
Say
how I feel?
Tell
you what you’ve been missing, because I can tell you right now that you’ve missed a lot more than you could have ever possibly imagined.”

“What have I missed?”

“The letters I wrote but had no way to send, the things I wanted to tell you when I was sad and depressed and lonely, the fact that I planted each and every rosebush along the path that led to our home the first summer you were gone. You don’t know,” she said, shaking her head, continuing her pursuit back and near the edge of the dock. “You don’t know anything.”

“You
’re going to fall off if you’re not careful.”

“Getting a little wet won
’t amount to all the pain I’ve gone through these past five years.”

“I know how you must feel,” Nova said, stepping forward and reaching out to take his wife
’s hands. “I can’t say I know
exactly
how you feel, because trust me, if I did, I’d have more than enough pain for both of us, but there were days I cried because I couldn’t be with you, Katarina. I’d lay awake at night thinking about what all you’d done during the day, what you’d accomplish, the life you were living that I couldn’t be a part of. I thought of
everything,
because out there—on the ocean, in that godforsaken frozen land, on that damned island and on the front lines—I had all the time in the world to think about what you were doing, and let me tell you, you can’t get much more time than that.”

“Nova—“

“I love you more than anything else in the world. I would
die
for you, I would give you
everything you could ever possibly imagine,
but I don’t know if I can give you a family—not now, not with so much going on.”

“But why?
Why would you deny us such happiness?”

“Because I don
’t want to leave you behind!”
he cried, thrusting his hands in the air. “I don’t want you to be pregnant with our child while I’m gone doing god knows what.”

“Odin
’s gone, Nova.”

“That doesn
’t mean I won’t be drafted if they come back.”

Katarina said nothing. Instead, she turned to look at the lake that lay no more than a foot away, then bowed her head.

When he heard her tears drop into the water, Nova stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“You don
’t know how much I love you,” Nova whispered.

“Don
’t worry,” Katarina whispered back. “I do.”

Their hands touched.

His heart began to bleed.

Neither of them said a word as they made their way from the dock and to the castle. Heads bowed, hands in their pockets, lips so tightly pursed they could have easily been sewn shut by the cosmic force of an old hag’s needle—it seemed to Nova in the brief moments that he looked up and at his wife’s face that something terribly wrong had transpired, something so terrible that it could end their marriage altogether.

There,
his conscience whispered, the single word a dull stone meant only to be thrown at the back of someone’s head.
Look what you’ve done.

A total eclipse of the earth, the moon, the sun, the very universe in which they lived and the
ground they stood—all seemed to align at the exact perfect moment to make his life a living hell.

At the junction of the road—where the path diverged
and led to the front of the castle and the end of the royal grounds—Nova raised his head and looked his wife straight in the eyes for the first time since leaving the pond.

“Honey,” he said, wanting to reach out and touch her, but unsure if he should.

“Yes?” she asked, matter-of-factly and with little emotion on her face.

“I…” He paused. A glimmer of light twinkling from the castle
’s higher towers caught his attention for but a moment before he returned his attention to his wife. “You… at least understand what I was getting at, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Then you’re not mad at me?”

“I would say disappointed more than anything else,” she shrugged, crossing her arms over her breasts and locking one ankle behind the other. “Let me tell you something before I go any further, Nova—I didn
’t say the things I said because I feel some sort of obligation to have your children. I
know
you want a family, because God knows I’ve been wanting one for the last few years myself, but I can’t force anything on you that you don’t want, especially if you don’t agree with whatever it is I’m thinking of.”

“You know I couldn
’t leave you alone with a baby.”