The Hunchback's Reluctant Bride ✔

5 | Patience

The house was alive with activity, shouting, and panic in all directions. Sometime in the chaos, Wyrn sat down at the eating table, but could not find the strength to stand up.

Several sister-in-laws as well as Mother had to attend to the princess. Even with water put to her lips, she hadn't the strength to drink it the last he saw of her. After everyone whisked her away, Wyrn came here.

The room eating area was small, or so everyone said after leaving this house for an extended period of time.

In the center, the large wooden table, which was actually two graphed as one, was worn but darkened in color by age.

And it didn't feel small. Not even slightly. For Wyrn, thanks to his stunted stature, there would be no such feeling. The room didn't feel small now, but rather, he did.

He supposed he should be thankful that the gazes that lingered on him in passing held sympathy and not contempt. He'd had a wife for a few days and had managed to nearly starve her to death. And when everyone eventually found out she was a princess her father had been eager to get rid of, he could suffer that embarrassment all over again.

The only advantage to all the hubbub was that his mother no longer stared at him, mouth agape, panting, "You haven't! You mustn't have. Who is this woman!"

Even now, Wyrn, quite stunned at the time, puzzled over his answer. "She's my wife."

"Oh?" Mother challenged. For a moment, she became hopeful. It wasn't long. And it was simply a hint of it, but it had been there. "All right. What's her name?"

Her name.

With each passing second, his mother's expression of woe and fear deepened to the point that she seemed ready to go mad with grief. All Wyrn could do was break her gaze.

He hadn't known the princess's name. She'd never given it. Perhaps the king had said it in passing but Wyrn, quite fed up at the time, hardly listened.

"It's...." His mouth hung open, but words wouldn't come out.

The moment his mother looked away from him, he lost track of time. He was in motion, though he could not feel his steps. And then he came back to himself to find that he'd sat here all alone, safe from everyone's judgement.

He hadn't yet contended with his father and the disappointment awaiting him. Wyrn readied his excuses. He couldn't say he didn't know who she was—that he'd never seen her before—that she'd climbed into his wagon sometime on his journey. Once awake, she would prove that wrong. Nor could he admit to winning her in combat against a prince. Her father had been eager to give his only daughter, perhaps his only child, away to a hunchback he'd never seen before. That did not speak of a prize but rather a scapegoat. And Wyrn was that.

What was left to say? That they were lovers?

Scoffing, Wyrn watched the table at which he sat.

There was nothing to say. Nothing that would shine a favorable light on him. So, when two people sat down before him, he kept focused on the cracked brown, nearly black wood of the table.

Wyrn risked picking his head up to witness his mother's forlorn expression. The man beside her wasn't Father, however, but Bonn, his eldest brother.

A glance to the right, by the door frame, showed the big man standing there, arms folded, watching the show.

Mother, still too shocked to speak, matched Wyrn's defeated posture, so Bonn took the lead.

"No one's blaming you, brother, but you're setting our people back a hundred years. What were you thinking?"