Tears. Treacherous, vengeful, searing tears that burned my skin open as they fell, spilled from my eyes and no matter how hard I tried, I could no longer contain them.
“A queen has no time for tears…”
Amma’s words echoed in my mind, but it was too late to stop them. It was too late… They took over my being, reducing the warrior, the strong and capable woman I had fought so hard to become, to nothing.
I had failed my parents. I’d destroyed everything they built by thinking I deserved to be happy too. By putting myself first for once and thinking I could still protect them.
What had I done?
The stage suddenly swayed under my feet, and my knees hit the stone floor while my entire world crumbled before me. I had built a fortress around my heart. A fortress of steel to protect me so I would never have to feel the pain, the loss, and the overwhelming solitude that came with being who I was,everagain. I’d strengthened its walls every day for as long as I could remember, and here it was, broken.
I was broken. The strength I’d desperately clung to for so many years was gone.
As slow and torturous as rivers of liquid fire, all the buried pain and repressed sorrow I had imprisoned in the recesses of my being carved their way out of me until I no longer recognized my own voice. The deep, loud, and devastating cries that ripped out of my throat could not possibly be mine. The woman falling apart right now, hurt, and lost, with betrayal splitting her soul open couldn’t be me.
Yet, as sweltering, all-consuming, unbearable anguish coursed out of me, I wasn’t sure I would survive it.
Flashes of my past returned to haunt me while my body shook over the floor, unable to be controlled. My hands reached for the stone, looking for something to hold on but finding nothing. There was nothing anymore, it was all gone.
The memory of my Amma, wounded and bleeding, telling me my parents would never come back played before me, followed by the image of her saying goodbye and running towards Azazel, her body falling to her death in the abyss afterwards. I relived my warriors dying as we tried to save our people. Each funeral ceremony I had ever endured. Every friend I was ever forced to say goodbye to for the last time…
Penelope.
I was numb no more.
Shaking so hard I could no longer hold myself I gripped the edge of the stage, my cries sounding farther and farther away until all sound seemed to forsake me. I could no longer see my people leaving, I could barely breathe between sobs and the wailing of my shattered heart. I knew Willow was close, I felt Braxton’s presence near me, all trying to reach me, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t let them.
How could Lachlan do this to me? After everything we had been through, after I had loved him like a friend…
Soft arms suddenly wrapped around me, sharing a warmth that only added to my pain because I recognized it, and it was something I hadn’t felt since my mother was taken from me.
Lifting my blurred gaze, I found an older woman holding me against her chest, her motherly embrace sending new tears to my eyes. It was Harriet, one of the silk-weaving sisters. Her husband had given his life fighting under my command, fighting for our freedom, and here she was, hugging me.
Her loss was also mine, the agony plunging my heart further into the darkness.
“Make it stop, please…” I begged. “I can’t-I can’t breathe. Please make the pain stop…”
“I cannot, my queen. You must feel it. We all must. It is the only way to come out on the other side,” she whispered, dragging a soothing hand along my hair like a loving mother would. “I am sorry, my queen. We never thought…”
Pausing, Harriet shook her head, her own tears falling.
“You were so strong that we never thought about the weight you carried. Now I know that just because we didn’t see you hurting, it didn’t mean the pain wasn’t there. I am truly sorry we did this to you.”
“We?” I asked, lips trembling, and she nodded, glancing at my arm.
When my eyes followed, I realized several hands were holding me, some along my arm, others along my leg and dress as people gathered at the edge of the stage for me, all of them trying to get closer. Blinking the dampness away, my hazy gaze swept over their faces to find tears streaking their cheeks too, hurt bursting out of them while they cried with me.
My pain became theirs.
Those nearer to me stretched their hands as far as they could, desperate to touch me, trying to offer their warm and consoling touch like Harriet was doing. Others held on to the person before them, unable to reach me, but content to be touching someone who was touching me.
One after the other our people grabbed onto each other’s shoulder or back, creating a chain that linked them all together. More men and women joined them, forming row after row until they filled the center of the arena. Fresh tears brimmed in my eyes while I followed the multitudes united for me all the way back. The people who had begun to leave stood frozen in place, shaken to their core by witnessing my devastation.
Gripping one of the hands that reached for me, new sobs left me, mixing with theirs. I reached for someone else, getting relief from finally feeling their touch and support, while Harriet’s caress continued along my back.
Offering me a tearful smile, Willow picked up the circlet that had fallen with me, fixing the crown on my head.
I had no idea how long I sat there, embraced by a mother that wasn’t my own, feeling the warmth of people who had never touched me before today. Seeing their tears fall with mine because my pain was now theirs, after I had carried their pain as mine my entire life. And yet, the tears didn’t cease, they couldn’t, they’d been my prisoners for far too long.
