In the end, it all became ash. Molten dreams of what was, scalding heart and soul even as it passed through his fingers like water. Tears stained his cheeks when her memory came to mind. In the eyes of his fellow knights he was as he always was: Cold and distant. The walls he'd built were too high to crumble. His fortress was impenetrable. His face a slate, showing no emotion. Eventually, it felt like what the fortress was built to hide had already rotted away. It became an empty prison for the pieces of his broken heart to lay like shattered glass.
It was so hot there. His armor glowed with heat from the rays of fire in the sky. He said nothing. Water grew scarce. His throat was dry, cracked, and sore from the sand. He said nothing. Suffering found his body as well as his soul. He said nothing.
Around him, men he'd known his whole life died by the handful. From the heat. From the dwindling water. From their enemy, waiting in the dunes. Gleaming spear points to bite into the flesh, burning day or frozen night. He still said nothing.
He wished the same fate would find him. It didn't. Yet he wished for it, even as all of his being yearned that he would not be stopped this night, or the next. With his blade's touch and spill of blood on the sand, solace did not find him. The bodies lay before his feet were shallow comfort to him. They were nothing to him. Killing them didn't bring her back.
His every moment was put forth towards breaking them. His thoughts lingered like a blind man's stare. He didn't even see the inevitable coming. He won. His war was finished. She was avenged. Every last one of them, in chains or dead. Women and children spirited into bondage. Their people, their culture annihilated. So why did he still hurt? His heart didn't seem to care that he'd avenged her memory. The suffering and fear that he saw in their eyes as he stared down at them didn't fill the void. The token resistance their flesh gave as the edge of his sword parted them from life made him no happier. It didn't sadden him now, either.
A feeling of surreality permeated his world. The days after the war were the same. It was as if she'd never existed. Even as he kneeled with sword and bowed head to the one she would marry as he took the throne, the world felt hollow. What was the point of a life with her absence?
He remembered the comfort of her voice. Her naiivity in loving him, her insistence in battering down every barrier he put up time and time again to make him surrender his heart bare each time. She would take a small piece of it with her to sleep at night, even while he lay awake with mind and heart abuzz. She'd collect more pieces as he fell deeper in love with her. Hopelessly in love. The pain of it that came to him whenever he realized that he could never truly be hers. It would fade in a moment with her in his arms. He could care about nothing more than he cared about her, even with the unspoken divide between them. The barrier between the earth and the stars. The servant and the master. It all might as well have been a dream. Yet for some reason he felt so content. So happy to just pretend, even while her marriage was arranged.
He longed for the nights when they would sit together. Her feather of weight on him as she'd sit with her back to his chest. The feel of her silken night gown against his skin. His arms around her to hold her, to protect her. How she'd share her favourite of evening delicacies, reddened tart grapefruit with fine table sugar. How he'd come to love the taste.
She was always stronger willed than him. Even when he was upset with her, when he would use his absence of words to shut her out. At the end of the day it was always as it should be; the knight kneeling to his princess, submissive at heart. That was why he felt so lost now. He was a dog, abandoned by owner. Stray and directionless.
Perhaps the worst of it was the loneliness. The comfort no one tried to give. To the rest of the world he was made of ice, sharp as a sword, and as guarded as brambles. Yet she accepted him that way. Loved him that way. And now with her absence, there was no one else who did.
He thought to avenge her by retaliating against her assassins. The sultanate in that damned desert, when her prince became king. He spent years in that desert. Years fighting their civil war. He thought it to be the final chapter in his twisted life. His parting touch on the world?
Guess not. Atrocities of war to his name now. Praises sung of them, honors and status that he'd never known. He was spoken of as a hero, to his face and when he was not there to hear it. He was invited to banquet and feast. A weary gaze glazed his eyes. The words went unheard as that gaze endlessly stared at the red of sliced grapefruit in the center of the table.
After many empty days of wordless stares and bottles of wine to mark their passing, he left. No letter to commemorate. No words to share his pain. A single thing missing from his life. An end.