It was unbearable.

Unimaginable.

I didn't know what to make of myself.

I wanted to put my hand through my chest, grab my heart and pull it out, raw.

We ignored each other for so long...

That had also been unbearable.

As I caressed his still, porcelain face, remembering our last night together where we'd just clung to each other, crying, our naked bodies glued together, him with bitemarks all over the insides of his thighs from me, and we had talked, for hours, trying to find a solution for us but failing. He had been the light of my world, filling my sullen days with laughter, with an ease that I had never before experienced until he came along and showed it to me.

"Your newest warrior" my captain had introduced us, stepping aside to reveal Nicholas to me as if he was the greatest gift in the world, and he was. I had immediately fallen for him.

How could I not? He was insanely beautiful, so much so that it sometimes pained me to look at him to such an amount that I had to look away. The tension between us that first day had been unfathomable as we walked together around the castle, alone, me showing him around. I had finished off with his bedroom. We had walked in, closed the door behind us and thrown ourselves at each other. It had been the first time for both of us, him seventeen, me twenty-four. I had believed it was a one-off thing, but we couldn't keep away from each other. No matter how many times I told myself it was the last time, that I shouldn't bed my best warrior, we kept coming back to each other, over and over until one day, I just stopped fighting it. I had loved him. I had loved him so much.

I just hadn't loved him as he had loved me.

And we didn't sleep the night I told him, just clung to each other before moving on to avoid each other, exchanging one extreme for another. As soon as I passed the door of a room where Nicholas was, I cast my eyes down and walked away. When he happened to walk through a room where I was, he cast his eyes down and walked faster to be out of my presence as quickly as possible. At dinners where both of us were required to attend, we both had to hold our eyes downcast, all of our attention focussed on not looking at each other. The sexual tension between us had been so thick at those times, I could hardly breathe.

Come back! I wanted to scream now as I held his lifeless face in my hands, grateful it was blurred out by my tears as it would be unbearable to see it properly. It wasn't until my captains screamed at me that they couldn't hold back much longer that I had, finally but unwillingly, let his body go with a scream of emotional pain, and jumped up on my horse with a roar, the magic of the crystals soaring through my arm. My dove blue coat danced around me, my white hair a frenzy, having lost the band that had held it in the low ponytail. The skies had worked up a wind, the distant clouds whispering of a thunderstorm to come. A heavy rain started to fall.

Izuna disappeared for hours, and my heart went out to him. There was nothing in this world I wanted to do other than hold him, for hours, showing him the love I could never show Nicholas, until the war was done. Even if we were on opposing sides of the war, enemies, and I had screamed at him in disappointment, my soul and everything else that was me ached for him.

The rain was as heavy as the ocean when I finally saw him. He was off his horse, probably having lost it to an elven sword or arrow, and he was battling on foot. I didn't know if battling was the right word for it; he was dancing, twirling, stepping, his sword a part of him, slicing through elf after elf. His didn't burn his enemies the way he used to, but instead caused blood to rain all over him, mixing with the rain falling on his face. He was wild, he was dangerous.

He was absolutely beautiful.

And when he caught sight of me, time stopped the way it always did when it surrounded us.

We stood still then, me on my horse, clad in light blue as if I were the goodness, him all in black as if he were the evil while in reality, the opposite was true. He was the best person I had ever met.

And it struck me. It suddenly struck me what those images the amethyst planet had showed of me drowning meant.

In the vision, I had been close to giving up, close to breathing in the salt of the ocean. The vision the amethyst had showed me was me drowning in a loveless life, drowning in lack of love, in the rejection of Nicholas. But Izuna had pulled me up, and I had resurfaced meeting his pearly laughter. 

Oh my God... 

My eyes welled up with tears when as I looked at him, and he looked at me, and we looked at each other while the world around us disappeared the way it always did when there was him, and there was me. I saw Izuna's face change; he had noticed I had realised something. Suddenly, I was desperate to escape the war. I hated the war. Absolutely hated it. And I blamed myself for not having made a better job of preventing it. I wanted to be remembered as a king who avoided war when it was at my doorstep, not as a king who went out to fight, and lost, not only his war but also all his men. A heaviness lay over me then, and I realised I needed to sleep, seeing the battle would probably drag on for days due to the tens of thousands that were partaking. 

I cast one look at Izuna. Then, I turned my horse around and cantered away.

The capital of Anderion, or the Kingdom of Autumn Fire, was different than other capitals in that the only inhabitants were the king, the royal family if there was one, and the court. The closest villages to the capital were elven villages, but they were a long way away; the land behind the cliffs encompassing the valley was also empty for acre after acre.

Except for one timber cottage. 

The cottage was tall to be suitable for elves but small and incredibly cosy. The timber also made up the inside walls, and it was only lit by small, magical lights floating in the one room as fireflies, but unliving, casting the dark wood and white sheets in a beautiful glow. 

I walked in, the small lights floating aside as the space was taken up by my body, and kicked off my shoes, covered in blood. I became aware of the incredible pain in my shoulder blades; an old injury in my left trapezius was making itself reminded and made me feel as though I needed a long, hot bath. I removed my dirty clothes, covered in sweat and dust and dirt and rust-smelling blood, stepped over them on the floor on my way to the bathroom that held a large, clean bath that was made glistening by the tiny lights, with a window looking out over the hills that became the cliffs that surrounded my valley. As I watched the storm raging outside my window, such a contrast from the warm calm of the bathroom, I felt guilt creeping up by me being here, in my bathroom, while the war was still being fought.

Allow yourself this, a voice in my head said; Erika's voice, and Nicholas' voice, and Izuna's voice. Your former lover just died. You're fighting the man you love in a war. You've been out since dawn, fighting. Allow yourself this one thing.

I tubbed the bath for me and stepped in without hesitation even if the water was scolding, relaxed, washed my body and hair and soul with soap and oils, cleaning the sadness away. My palms slid unpleasantly over the rashes I'd gathered all over my body, the eeriness of the sensation greater than the pain, which I could easily stand. I stepped out, dried myself with a towel that hung off a hanger, stepped out into the room naked.

And then there was a knock on the door I had been waiting, but hardly dared hope for.