The darkness is so complete I had to crawl on my hands and knees to find a place to rest my body. I have no idea where I am on the ship, but I have found a soft surface to lie on.

The thoughts won’t leave me alone. I guess that’s what the person or people who ordered this want.

Well, they got their wish. I can’t sleep. It’s as if the spell Kataline put the opposite spell on me than the one she put on the people who sleep now.

Memories keep coming to me. The one that keeps coming is the one when our oldest son fell from the top of a tree in the red forest and died.

I was there. I was supposed to be keeping him safe. I failed.

His little lifeless body was so badly broken. My heart aches at the memory. It was all my fault.

I deserved what I got when Gleeu held me responsible. She never forgave me. In the public eye, she did. But not in reality.

No one knew about that. We kept that well-hidden. Even Kerr didn’t know how we were in private. She didn’t speak to me once we were alone.

I can’t blame her. It was my fault we lost our first-born. I endured the torture of not being able to touch the woman I loved more than life itself.

Gleeu would look at me with light in her eyes when we had social functions. She turned that light on like a switch, and off as well.

It never failed to give me hope when I’d see it there. It also never failed to tear a little bit more of my heart when she turned it off again when we got back to being alone.

Something happens to a person when their child dies. It shuts something down in them, even if they have others. A piece of them is missing and can’t ever be replaced.

I lost Hexor, and at the same moment in time, I lost Gleeu.

She held my heart in her hands. Since the first time my eyes fell on her sweet face, she had my heart.

I never faulted her for how she treated me after Hexor’s death. But it hurt more than losing him. He was my son, but she was a part of me.

We used to joke around that she and I shared a soul. We were a couple of half people until we found one another. Only then did we become one.

My body aches as I recall asking my brother to kill her. For the life of me, I don’t know where my mind was at that time. It was gone.

I don’t know who was controlling me. Certainly not myself. Certainly not the man who still completely loved his wife even if she hated him for his role in their son’s death.

All I knew was once her body was found, I knew he’d done it. I had to get him and take him somewhere else. I couldn’t look at him.

I hated him for doing what I’d asked him to in an obvious moment of madness.

So I snuck away one night and drugged him. I then put him on a tiny ship and took him to the nearest planet and dumped him off.

Once I made it home, I agonized over what I had done to my brother. Again, one moment of madness just kept getting bigger. Now it was more like a year of madness, not a mere moment.

Escalating to new depths. I managed to stop the horrible things I was doing, but I never did go back and try to fix any of them.

I could’ve gone and found my brother. I could’ve brought him home and told the other royals what I had done and faced the consequences, but I didn’t.

I kept quiet and felt I deserved the nightmare plaguing me. Gleeu came to me in the dead of night at times and hovered over me, taking my breath from me.

I’d see her fleeting gown as she moved away from me. I’d chase after the ghost until it disappeared. Her scent left in its wake.

I deserved for her to haunt me. I knew that.

If I could turn back time. Oh, how I’d change it all. But I can’t so I’ll accept my fate.

In the end, maybe on the other side of this life, I will find my Gleeu again. Perhaps she’ll hate me no longer for the loss of our son who is over there as well. Maybe we can be a family over there.

Kerr can join us when it’s his time. Maybe it won’t be so bad.

The ship lurches, and I nearly fall off the bed. I look out the window and see one of the moons is very close. That means we are mere hours away from landing.

Hours away from my fate.

How I wish it didn’t have to end this way…