Chapter 21 – Wheat and Silk

Lillia was screaming. Lillia was alone. Lillia was underdressed.

None of those things should have been possible, because beyond all other truths, Lillia Ashvalin was dead.

Over the years, many people had explained the afterlife to Lillia in different ways. The clergy had promised a land of wheat and silk, where dutiful daughters, wives, and mothers were blessed in the halls of their family.

Lillia’s mother had never sounded convinced. She worried they only had one little life. She worried she was not doing enough with the finite time she had. She worried that no matter how long Lillia lived, it would never be long enough for Lillia to understand how much she was loved.

That was the idea that had stayed with Lillia when her parents disappeared. The priests promised paradise. Her mother had feared silence.

Outside the realm of promises, her parents were just gone.

Poets called death cold. The priests called it kind. Her mother called it nothing. Lillia had never figured out what she thought the end would be like. Even after her parents disappeared, she had struggled to apply the idea to herself.

But even in her darkest thoughts, when Lillia thought about death, she was fairly sure she wasn’t supposed to feel so alive.

There was nothing in this space and yet there she stood. If she was standing, that meant there must have been a floor.

Alongside that thought, the nothing below Lillia solidified into a foggy gray expanse. Like clouds that had been crushed so dense they formed a pathway under her feet.

Lillia thought of those dense, heavy clouds, and the world smelled like rain. She thought of rain, and its cooling touch appeared on her skin. She noticed she had skin, and suddenly she was there. She realized she was still screaming and found a mouth so she could stop.

The screaming stopped. What replaced it was not silence. Silence was something. This was the absence of sound, the way a void was the absence of light.

Even in the dungeon’s darkest corners, there had been dripping water, distant scratching, the sound of her own breathing. Here, Lillia had to remember to breathe before she could hear herself do it.

Fingers. Hands. Hair. Breath. It all followed. Lillia’s stream of thought gushed forward and defined herself once again. She was thin. She was too tall for most boys. Her hair was long and neatly brushed. Her eyes felt wide and bright. A scar ran along her shoulder.

Lillia believed the chitterpede should have left more marks, and all at once they were there. Puncture wounds where she’d been bitten.

Nothing hurt. That was wrong. Since the moment she’d fallen into the dungeon something had always hurt. There were always blisters, bruised knees, sore shoulders, and aching muscles. All of that was gone. That comfort was almost worse than the pain had been. Lillia didn’t feel like she was in her own skin. Lillia didn’t have her body. She had a body.

Lillia was naked in the soft rain of…

Well, it certainly wasn’t a land of wheat and silk.

Lillia tried to walk and found that she could. Her steps were slow and cautious. She didn’t know if that was a limitation of circumstance or just how her new body wanted to approach things.

Lillia realized her bare feet were clicking against the dense clouds as if she were wearing sharp heels. Of course they did. That was what Lillia’s footsteps usually sounded like.

The rain fell at a soft, deliberate pace, cool but not cold. As Lillia walked, she became wet, then soaked. Brown hair stuck to her forehead and clung to her ears as she continued on her path to…

Where was she going?

She was supposed to come back when this happened, wasn’t she? Back to the hearth. Back to the dungeon.

But if she controlled where she went, was she allowed to just leave?

Lillia stared off into the distance. She looked across each horizon. All of the nothingness was the same, but in an unexplainable way she understood the difference between them.

Lillia could walk back to the hearth. She could return to the fight. She could be gross, cold, and dirty again.

Or she could walk away and embrace the quiet.

There wasn’t much here, but maybe it was enough, maybe it was better.

Maybe Sir Nobody had a point. The dungeon would always need new bones with which to light the hearth.

Lillia clenched her fist. It was good to remember that she could make one.

Maybe if she gave up now she could head to the land of wheat and silk. Maybe her parents were waiting for her there. Maybe she and her dad could laugh about her failed attempt to hunt. Maybe her mother could help her fix her dress.

Lillia had tried. She tried so hard. That was enough. That was enough.

Lillia squeezed her fist tighter. Her nails dug into her palm.

She was just a stupid princess. She wasn’t supposed to be here. Her aunt had been trying to kill her, and her aunt had succeeded. Lillia just hadn’t caught up to reality for a couple of days.

Lillia bit her lip and pulled on the skin.

No.

No, it wasn’t enough.

Lillia didn’t know if it was possible, but she knew she wasn’t done.

The princess, the heiress of House Ashvalin, turned away from the peaceful quiet.

The soft rain became a storm. Wind tore through the space, whipping the cloudy floor into fog. White flashed across the sky.

It wasn’t lightning.

[RETURN TO THE HEARTH?]

Lillia glanced back over her shoulder. The option she was leaving behind had changed. Instead of the dull nothingness, Lillia saw golden light. She saw the shape of soft rolling fields. She saw the promise of a land of wheat and silk. The princess closed her eyes.

She swore she heard her father’s voice.

A lesser father might have called her over. Begged her to join him in paradise.

Lillia would not believe that of her father. She would not believe her mother would ask her to give up.

The words she finally heard were a medley of both their voices. Something born from the two of them.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“I’m not giving up yet.”

Only after she’d said it that Lillia realized that the medley of her parents was herself.

[RETURN TO THE HEARTH?]

Lillia closed her fist around the word “hearth.” If this dungeon was going to kill her, it would need to do it more than once. Havoc wouldn’t remember her as a lost story.

Thunder boomed. White crashed around the princess. The world was gone. Lillia closed her eyes and stepped away from the land between.

Her mother had always worried that everyone had but one little life. This princess had three.

Lillia stepped away from the land between.

She expected the hearth.

She found someone waiting instead.

She did not wake beside the hearth.

She did not wake in the dungeon.

She woke in the thin place between sleep and opening her eyes, and before she saw anything, she knew someone was watching her.

Lillia squeezed her eyes tighter, forcing them shut in a way she only could once she was already awake. That was apparently enough.

“It’s been a while since I had a visitor,” the Watcher said. Their voice was deep and smooth, almost charming. It lingered in Lillia’s ears and teased her closer to awake. “Why don’t you introduce yourself?”

Now that someone was talking to her, Lillia became terrifyingly aware that she was still completely naked. The princess shot up and wrapped herself tightly in her arms, covering everything she could. Once she flipped her hair out of her face she saw who The Watcher was.

The Watcher was a man. Handsome, no, beautiful, clad in intricate dull-silver armor. Platinum hair brushed the edges of dagger-sharp cheekbones. His face was thin and pretty, but his shoulders were too broad for frailty.

Lillia was already keenly aware that she was naked. She felt even more blood rush to her cheeks but she didn’t mind it quite as much anymore.

“Oh, of course. Allow me, your highness.” The Watcher snapped his fingers and the thick violet cloak that had hung off his armor detached itself and flew over to Lillia. It landed softly on her, the clasp stopping short of closing around her neck.

He looked like that and he was a gentleman?