311: The distance between them (part 1)

The distance between them (part 1)

Barefoot, Adela walked amidst the ashes that were once the home she and Egon had shared for a short but cherished time. But the surroundings felt utterly surreal. Instead of the familiar forest close to their house, everything encircling it was marble, stark white, an otherworldly contrast to the devastation around her.1

This cannot be real.

"Is that you, Adela?"

The voice came from behind, and when she turned, she had to look up to meet the gaze of the man who had spoken, a figure almost as tall as her husband. Her breath caught in her throat as she met his eyes. It was Bastian, but something was profoundly different. The scar that marred his eye was absent, and his gaze held a fear that mirrored her own.

"You can see me?" he asked, his bewilderment evident.

She wished she could answer, but as in Varinthia, her voice was gone and she was mute again. Fury welled up in her chest. Had Aldric found a way to reach her once more and taken her away?

"Forgive me, Adela," Bastian uttered with a sense of disappointment before turning away, moving ominously slowly, as if his own feet were rebelling, just like her voice.

What are you sorry for?

Desperation filled her as she reached out to stop him to demand answers for the apology he had offered. However, her attention was diverted by a glimmer of gold beneath a heap of charred debris. She crawled toward it, her hands digging through the remnants of her shattered home. Just as she was about to grab the mysterious object, a presence loomed behind her.

With a sense of dread, she turned, and there, before her, was a lopsided smile and the snow-like white hair she had grown to despise so much.

Damn you, Aldric of Varinthia!

***

"Egon! Egon! Egon!"

Adela awakened from her horrific nightmare, her screams echoing her husband's name. But screaming felt good, screaming meant that she had her voice back, and that Aldric had not taken her away once more.

A gentle calloused hand brushed her damp hair away from her forehead, his breathing carrying a weighty seriousness. "I am here."

As she struggled to catch her breath and steady her racing heart, her gaze instinctively sought his side of the bed. It appeared undisturbed, confirming her suspicion that he had entered the room only when her cries had been heard by him wherever he was, not before.

"You should have dried your hair before going to sleep," he remarked.

She regarded him with a sad gaze. You should have been here beside me. Perhaps she would not have had that horrible nightmare about his brother then.

"…Where is Bastian?"

Her family, including Leopold and Andreas, had visited her in this room, yet Bastian was conspicuously absent. Egon, insisting that she take a bath after everyone left while he used another room to do the same, had left her alone. He didn't return as she had expected, and she eventually drifted into slumber.

Falling asleep so easily felt unnatural to her.

Her husband cupped her face, his thumbs erasing the lingering traces of fear from her heart as they caressed her cheeks and forehead. His voice was laced with gentle reproach when he spoke next.

"You've been inquiring about other men quite a bit today."

A frown creased her forehead. "You excused yourself and left the room when my father began discussing Bastian's situation. You only returned briefly after my family departed, asking me to bathe..."

"So?" He questioned.

Are you keeping something from me?

"...Where is Bastian? Please, just tell me."

"In his room. Sleeping. Are you satisfied now?"

"He hasn't visited me," she pressed further.

"He's feeling guilty over that evening when he asked me to meet him. Give him some time."

There it was again, the wall between them.

"…What?" he inquired as she continued to study him.

"One only feels guilty when they've committed a wrongdoing," she whispered.

He pushed himself off the side of the bed where he had been sitting next to her, pacing the room restlessly.

"I've told you that I want to pretend it never happened."

She swallowed uneasily, her gaze averted. "If he did something… I should know."

"Why?" he snapped.

"Because I see myself as a sister to him, and I can assist him when it comes to my father and Sir Gustav," she replied softly. Her feet slid off the bed, and she reached for her nightgown, clutching it on both sides. Without looking at her husband, she began to remove it.

Before she took another breath, he was next to her, placing his hands over hers and sending tingles coursing down her spine, but it seemed like she was the only one affected.

"What are you doing?" he asked, his eyes wide with surprise.

"I'm going to get dressed and head over there."

"Go where?"

"To our house... I want to see it."

He looked perplexed. "Now?" 

She nodded and began to remove her nightgown once more, but his firm grip on her hands halted her.

"...I can go in my nightgown," she suggested.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "What's gotten into you all of a sudden? Why are you being so stubborn?"

The way he hissed the word 'stubborn' at her was more acidic than the days he used to call her a mountain goat. Who would've thought I'd come to miss those days?

"...You married me fully aware that I can be stubborn. If it's troublesome for you to accompany me, I understand. You can stay here, and I'll call for my father's knights on guard duty."

She had noticed them outside his window; the von Conradie residence was swarming with knights from the First Order.

"The knights on guard duty?"

With a single tug, he pulled her against his broad chest. His red eyes, darkened with concealed emotions, bore down on her less-than-decent appearance.

"You plan to go out like this?"

Of course not. Sometimes he acted like such a child, whether it was his reluctance to talk when it was essential or making unreasonable demands for him to seize control of their shared life and steer it in whatever direction he pleased.

Egon, in more than one way, was still a mystery to Adela.

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