Face Of Fate

1. Vows

Lycaon Valdemar

He was sitting under the tree where the warm morning air was creasing his exposed skin. Lamentably, extracting the grass from the ground, he watched everyone placing flowers at his mother's grave. As long as he remembered, he's watching this death ceremony ritual which happens every year on his birthday. This day was always celebrated by curses, sadness, and hurt. Seeing his drunken father coming towards him, he disquietingly stared at the ground. With a leather bottle in his hand, dripping wine from his mouth, he stood in front of his son. Crude curses leaving his mouth with every sip of the drink. Hurtfully, he averted his moist eyes from his father.

"Look at me you murderer." He spilled the wine on him, blaming his son for the death of his wife.

Wiping his eyes dampened by the tears, he raised his head to face his father. A prince will never bow down his head- was the only reason he held his head high.

Arching over him, his father threw the bottle on the grass "You filthy little monster-"

"His majesty, it's time for us to leave." A soldier came to inform, distracting his father's gaze from him. Turning towards the soldier, he walked away from his son.

A black horse-drawn carriage stood in front of them with two horses and a coachman. Unsteadily, his father, King Valdemar, the king in the West stepped in with woozy steps.

"Lord Prince." The coachman outstretched a hand toward him.

The ride back to the castle began. Not to face his father who was sitting exactly in front of him, he slid open a little wooden window of the carriage to view out. When the wheel passed over a stone acting as a hurdle, the carriage jumped making his unconscious, drunken father slip from his seat. He glanced at him to help him back on the seat but, preferred to ignore as he wasn't strong enough to pull his huge, fat form. Small limbs of a seven-year-old were unable to do that. Carriage abruptly halted when a woman with a baby in her hands fell on the ground in front of it. Gaining a little sense on the sudden stop his father shouts from inside in a harsh and barely understandable tone.

"Who stopped it?"

"It's a woman with a baby." Coachman replied.

"Push her away." He yelled again in the same manner and adjusts himself back on the seat.

When the carriage starts again the boy threw a gold coin out of the window. Picking up the coin, she bowed at him. When they reached the castle, he quickly jumped out before the king could say any more curses and entered the enormous hall of the castle. The glass floor was making it appeared like frozen water. Glass chandeliers were hanging from the wooden ceiling with lighted candles. Wooden torches were placed in a row on either side on the walls, which wasn't lighted yet. And a throne exactly in front, where a large picture of his mother was hanging on the wall behind it. The picture was an embroidery work, a work made my linen threads on a thick brocade cloth.

Walking close, he stared at the picture. Because she died giving birth to him, he's living hell. Every year, staring at the picture he wished. He wished, he would have died rather than his mother. Living a hereafter life in heaven was better than living the hell in this life.

An unsteady voice of his father alerted him. "Isn't she beautiful?"

Glancing at his father who bought another leather bottle of wine, he again looked at the picture. Taking a sip from the bottle his father sat down whilst staring at the picture along with him. After babbling among himself he stood up.

"You shouldn't have come in our life." He again started cursing him. "You took my wife." He took another sip.

Every year facing the same thing was shattering him alive. Finally, after many years he replied to his father. "I can bring you another wife."