The Promise of the Dawn

Chapter Thirty-One: Aurora

He visited again the following night, leaving a bouquet of fresh flowers on the windowsill as he climbed down the side of the Estate, disguised by the darkness of the night as he walked back towards the woods, in a direction I'd never seen him go before.

Curiosity overcame me as I watched him walk away, and before I knew it, I too was climbing down the side of the building. The night is cold as my feet hit the grassy ground, and I wrap my cloak tighter around myself, glancing around nervously as I follow Samael across the field, towards the forest. He doesn't glance back a single time as he makes his way through the dark woods. Instead, he strides gracefully across the forest floor, his head held high in confidence as the hem of his cloak slowly begins to become saturated with mud.

I follow a distance behind him, nowhere near as confident as he is. I'd never been within the forest so late at night, and my mother always warned of the dangers within it. I follow him for a distance, until he eventually stops at an iron gate, which creaks as he opens it. Past the gate is the militial cemetery, where they kept the bodies of all the soldiers lost during the war. I recognized it well.

I'd been there three times already.

I'm distracted from my task of following Samael as I approach the gate, focusing on opening it without any sound, which I eventually accomplish, but when I look up, Samael has somehow vanished.

It could've been the chill of the wind, or the thought of being alone within a cemetery, surrounded by the dead and tormented, or maybe it was both, but I suddenly shiver as I glance about the headstones.I'm searching for a very particular one and the second I lay eyes on it, I walk over, kneeling atop the grave and running my fingers across the brand new engraving of the headstone.

Kalan Matthias Barlowe: Loving father and husband.

There could've been so much more engraved on there that could've described him better. That being said, this headstone was a luxury. One others who died later during the war, were not gifted. The casualties from the war had now become so much, that often times bodies were just dumped into open graves, along with countless others, and left there. There simply wasn't enough room in cemeteries for them to be buried properly. An issue that could be easily solved if the king allowed the expansion of militial cemeteries, but he didn't. And therefore, the bodies were simply dumped into a grave barely deeper than the trenches they fought within.

There were no flowers placed among my family's graves. Nothing to remind those who strolled through this cemetery how much they were loved, and I planned to change that, had I not been suddenly caught in a headlock, a knife held to my throat.

"Who are you? And why are you here?" A voice interrogates me.

I recognize the black sleeve of the cloak, but not the voice. I may have been able to answer, but my words were prevented by the strong grip around my throat, and I gasped for air, beginning to feel my face flush red.

"Amaris?... Let her go! I know her" Another voice chimes in.

This voice, I recognized well. I'm released from the headlock, falling to the ground on my hands and knees and coughing aggressively. Samael rushes over to me, kneeling down beside me and placing a comforting hand on my shoulder.

"Are you okay? What're you doing here?" He asks me.

Still recovering, I simply nod towards my father's headstone, redirecting his attention to the inscription across it.

"This is where your father's buried?" He asks me.

"Yes. And my two brothers alongside him" I explain.

"I see..." He says, trailing off.

"This is Amaris Barlowe. She lives within the Estate and is training to be a Guardian." Samael explains to who I can only assume is the person who tried to kill me.