There's A Fine Line Between Coincidence & Fate ✓

Chapter 34

Ardeth doesn't wake me the next morning but it doesn't really matter. Neither of us really slept last night. He's quiet as we move around the tent, getting ready, and it's starting to worry me. I understand that over the course of a single day he lost both his father and brother. My husband hasn't always been... Stoic. But this... I've never seen him like this.

"Please be careful Ardeth." I say quietly.

"I will do what I must." He says, his voice hard and void of emotion.

"Ardeth, please. Think of what this would mean. If you get yourself killed on this quest for revenge, the whole of the Medjai will fall into nothing but legend. I can't go with you this time. So I need you to do whatever it takes to come back to me, come back to us." I'm practically begging him at this point but he needs to know that I'm serious.

"I will be fine Margaret." He says sharply before leaving the tent. A single tear falls down my cheek before I regain my composure and follow him out to the entrance to the village where he's joined by the rest of the men.

"Come back to us, my son." Rahima begs before they ride off. "He will come back to us." She assures me.

"Of that I have little doubt. I just wonder if he'll still be my husband when he does." I say before I turn and head back to my tent.

...

A week passes with no news from the traveling party. In the meantime I have worried myself sick to the point where the camp physician is almost a constant presence in our tent, trying to keep me and the baby alive. "Ardeth needs to return soon. I fear for both of their well-beings should he not." I hear him tell Rahima after one checkup.

"You and me both." She says quietly and I hear him leave shortly after. "You need to fight this, whatever this is. You are stronger than this. You are a Medjai queen. We are built for stronger trials than this." She says and I try to respond, I really do. But I just have no energy left.

Mustering up what little I could, I try my best to sit up. "Promise me something Umi." She leans over. "Should Ardeth not return for the birth of his child and I should die in the process, you tell him I tried."

She shakes her head. "He will return before then. You just focus on conserving and building your energy back up." Rahima steps outside shortly after that. "Gods, you keep my son safe. I don't have much more family I can lose anymore." She whispers, but in the silence of the twilight, I can hear her just as if she was still beside me.

I didn't want to die. But in a world with no Ardeth, well besides the fact that I would die as punishment for failing, I didn't want to live. He was my world, my very reason for existing. I just hope he remembered that too.