Here we are again. Chapter 3, coming up. Enjoy! Thank you to my reviewers, I appreciate it!
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As I stand her at the wall, my father on my left, the woman I love to my right, I have never felt worse in my entire life. My entire body seems to be wrenched with guilt a thousand times more powerful than anything I have ever felt before. My heart aches with sorrow and pain, and my mind is sending tiny jolts of fragmented emotion up and down my spine. I feel as though I am being torn into a thousand pieces or stung by a thousand bees or stabbed a thousand times.
And I deserve every moment of it.
I know this above everything as I watch Hector, my closest ally, my protector for almost 27 years, my brother walk out on to the plain, about to face his doom for my foolish mistakes.
It reminds me of the time I was ten, and I stole my father's horse. I had thought I could handle a stallion of his size, but the horse stomped through my disillusionment very quickly (as well as nearly stomping on my face) when he bucked me and ran off into the hills of Troy. Scared, alone, and unsure of what to do, I went to the only person I was sure I could trust: Hector.
"Do you love me, Brother? Would you protect me from any enemy?" I asked him, nearly at the verge of tears. I remember he reached over and ruffled my hair before he answered.
"Of course I love you, Paris, and you need not worry about any enemy." I remember he seemed so wise to me, nearly ten years my senior at eighteen. And for some reason, before I had even told him what I had done, I was calmer, because somehow I knew that he would never break that promise.
And even though nearly seventeen years has passed since that day, he never has. No matter what I did.
Even through my greatest, most foolish act, an action so disastrous it now promised to destroy the country we both loved so dearly, Hector protected me.
I think the fact that hurts worst of all is that I can do nothing to protect him as he goes out to face his death. I can not even take his place, a place that rightfully belongs to me.
He was the better warrior. The better horseman. The better son.
Hector was the better man. He will always be the better man.
And though I have always known this, it hits me hardest this day, the day when his life is lost as a result of mine.
And for the first time in my life, I feel truly sorry for a mistake I have made. For the first time in my life, I wish that I could apologize for my wrongs.
But I know, even though I did not have the chance to beg my brother for forgiveness, I am already forgiven.
He is, after all, the better man.