𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀 𝐒𝐔𝐂𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘. 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍.
It's the beginning of a new age when Jaylah Imperatrix seemingly returns from the dead to reclaim her throne. And in perfect timing.
In her absence, evil has be...
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Act 3 Chapter 128 JAYLAH
It was a week and one day until Jaylah was going to be married.
She was dreading going to sleep that night and lowering the time to exactly a week. When Saria had helped her change into her nightclothes, she lingered despite being completely ready for bed. "Saria."
Saria looked up from where her hands were busy cleaning. "Yes?"
"You said you were contemplating marriage to a lover in your past. What was that like?"
Saria stopped tidying up and straightened. "What do you mean?"
"I mean..." She struggled to find the words. "You loved him, correct? So why did you not find a way to make him stay with you?"
The attendant made a hum in the back of her throat and Jaylah knew she guessed at Jaylah's own hesitation about Adrik. "Why don't you sit while we talk?" She patted the back of the chair. "Do not take offense to this, but your hair could use a brushing." Jaylah did, wary of what she was going to say.
"His name was Kajiro. He had come abroad to study in the University and I had my first job in its library as a bookkeeper. He immediately caught my eye, but I brushed it off. Most pretty boys are only pretty on the outside." She ran the comb down the middle to part Jaylah's hair. "But he was different. He was always requesting ridiculous books for me to fetch him, which he would never admit was just a ploy for my attention. A year later, we were together. It happened fast, so fast that we often discussed our future. I loved him so dearly. But his dream was to return to Tilana to open up a restaurant for his family and mine was to stay here to serve the Queen. He could not change that for me. I could not change that for him. And so I decided it would be best that we parted ways."
"Why?" asked Jaylah as Saria worked out a particularly vengeful knot. "Surely you could have found some other way to have everything you wanted."
"No." She could sense Saria shaking her head. "Another dream of mine was to have children. How could I choose to have my own children with him knowing that they were being born to parents that bore resentment and broken dreams?" She paused in her brushing to smooth Jaylah's hair. "I could not subject them to a fate in which they may end up the same way."
"You loved him so much. The loss did not sway you?"
"No. I knew it would hurt. It is still the most painful thing I have ever done. But it was the right choice. Sometimes you care for someone so much that letting them go is the most loving option you can give them. Whether they return or don't is not a matter of whether they love you enough. In a healthy relationship, you cannot make anyone stay. It is about letting yourself be fulfilled even if it breaks your heart."
Jaylah thought about that for a long while. It did not apply to her, as her marriage was not a romantic one. She was so prone to extremes nowadays that she could not imagine living in a marriage filled with love with the Czarevich. The gap between love and hate was beginning to be a chasm, and in order to not allow anyone caught in the middle to be swallowed up, she had to organize them into one of the aforementioned options.
