hoarfrost squeaking and crunching
“Haven’t you got it yet, little king? Mara’s mine. We have a connection so strong you could never even dream of. You are just an ordinary man, who’ll age and die,”
“So… are you my warden or my defender?” I ask hesitantly.
“Defender.”
Did you feel something?” he asks, surprised.
“Yes, pressure and pain. It felt like my eardrums were going to burst.”
“Sorry for that. I was tired, so you could partly feel what I did.”
“You’re lying again. You said yourself that I could only feel it if you were deadly wounded.”
“I keep forgetting that you’re too observant,” Aaron smirks.
on, there’s something else I need to do,” he brushes my hands off.
I watch in horror as his eyes darken and glaze over. My ears get plugged again and the pain in my bones and muscles becomes more acute as if the pressure is too high. Aaron continues looking through me. The whites of his eyes turn grey and he’s looking straight ahead with unseeing eyes. His nose starts bleeding again.
Something’s wrong.
My pain becomes unbearable and I clench my teeth and watch his skin growing paler.
“Enough!” I cry, shaking his shoulders. When nothing changes, I shake him harder.
He’s going to kill himself. My heart skips a beat and wonder what exactly scares me about it: that Morok will die or that I will die with him. I would prefer dying fast, like I did last time, not sitting there, watching my friend bleed to death.
I lift my hand to slap his cheek but he catches my wrist.
“Did you really want to hit me?”
His eyes are coming back to normal. The pain in my whole body subsides a little and I relax my clenched jaw.
break into song. The same song I sang on my first day out of the grave, acting on Daniel’s order. But then, I was singing it quietly and carefully. Now, my voice is filled with hate and is getting louder by the minute. It sends the ghouls and ghosts into a frenzy and they come for the soldiers with even more blood lust.
“Agatha! Stop it!” The king is crying but I continue singing with a smile.
“Haven’t you got it yet, little king? Mara’s mine. We have a connection so strong you could never even dream of. You are just an ordinary man, who’ll age and die,” Aaron’s petting me like a good dog, I feel the irritation rise up in me. But I keep it in check, guessing that Aaron has a plan, and I don’t shrug off his hand. “And we… we will be together for many years after your death. Our lives will become one and as they say in fairy tales, we’ll die on the same day. Together.”
“Agatha, are you sure you can trust him? Can you trust someone who raised you from the grave for heaps of gold and is now dragging you over the border, where I won’t be able to protect you anymore? Serat might just have promised him more gold.”
Damn him! Morok’s hand freezes on my hair.
But I banish these doubts, not allowing Daniel to mess with my head and undermine my trust to Aaron. He revealed his biggest secret to me. He told me that he was Morok.
“That’s enough,” Aaron cuts him off, taking his hand away himself. “Step aside, little king. Believe me, you don’t want to become my enemy.”
“Aaron,” I call him by his name quietly, though the soldiers are too far away to hear.
“Mm?”
“If it comes to it, promise me you’ll leave me behind. You’ll be able to get through without me.”
He doesn’t answer.
“No,” he finally says in a calm voice. “Who told you we can’t get through them together?”
Morok pulls the bridle and walks on. I follow him but do not abandon my attempts to change his mind.
“There are over a hundred soldiers there!”
“I said no, little Mara.”
“He needs me! Please! Just don’t let them catch you and then, break off our connection so that I can die before he tosses me back into the dungeons. You know that Maras can’t kill themselves,” I continue urgently while Daniel is still out of the earshot.
I’m sure Morok knows that. Suicide is not only a sin for a Mara, but it’s the end. It’s considered a betrayal, an attempt to escape your duty and fate of serving Morana. The Goddess will never take your soul and it will go straight to the Shadow. As much as I’m horrified by the prospect of being locked up in the dark cell again, it’s the lesser evil compared to the Shadow. Morok turns to me and puts his arm around me, pulling me closer.
“Just as I’ve said, Agatha, you know nothing about Moroks. And now you’ve seen my face, you seem to have forgotten that we are feared for being awful monsters. I don’t like reminding the world about it, but Daniel leaves me no choice.”
So, the story has been passed on by word of mouth; many details have been lost and even more have been added.
