The sun was hot ,blazing hot. Intolerable. His body was filled with purple bruises and gashes that stretched from his chest to his back. His kneecaps were sore from kneeling for almost a week. His lips dry ,he hadn't touched water in days, and licking them didn't help.
From the luxurious clothes he once wore to tatters barely covering his lower body . His sweat-drenched hair clung to his face, itchy and irritating, but he couldn't push it away his hands were tied with chains too tight, digging into his skin and leaving angry marks.
He was seething with rage. Rage that knew no bounds,rage that wanted to tear everybody apart everyone who looked down on him, everyone who insulted his family, who stood there watching him helpless, who accused him,who didn't believe him.
His eyes met his wife's and then his daughters'. His wife was being held back by men stronger than her . She struggled and squirmed, trying to break free to reach him, but she couldn't. She cried out, desperate to get to him, to free him. 'He didn't do it,he doesn't deserve this. You're all mistaken.'But her cries went unheard .
He wanted to reach her. He didn't want them his daughters to see him like this,he didn't like seeing his wife beg for mercy for something he didn't do .There was nothing he could do except look down with shame and smoldering anger.
"Enough!" came the bark from the man who had bound him in chains. The man he loathed more than anything in the world. The man he would kill the moment these chains came off.
"Your Majesty, please! He didn't do it," she begged on her knees. He didn't listen,he showed her no mercy ,showed them no mercy .He had been stalling for a week ,a week where he would have taken to investigate whether the High Warlord of war did do it .If the Warlod's hatred for the king had burned before, now it was an inferno. He forced himself to speak, his throat dry and raw. He couldn't bear watching his wife degrade herself in front of that beast.
"Don't do it... That coward doesn't deserve to be begged ," he croaked.
His voice was loud enough to be heard. His wife turned to him, terrified, and apologized fervently on his behalf.
"Ha! Coward? Warlord, do you know how treasonous it is to insult your king right after murdering your queen?" the King barked back, blind with rage. But he was no better than him. Both men were angry but only one truly had the right to be.
"You know the law an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." The king looked at Warlord with utter disgust. He wanted to kill him with his bare hands, but that would look bad in front of the citizens and that would also be an easy out for him.
He turned to the guards. "Release the warlord."
Murmurs broke out among the crowd. Why? He didn't deserve mercy. He had killed their queen.
"Hanging him will not be enough punishment."
The Warlord's wife, who had begun thanking the king, froze. Her smile vanished. She looked up at him, afraid of what he would say next and rightfully so.
"I lost a wife... so should he." He turned coldly. "Seize her and from today, I declare that man and his daughters banished from this kingdom."As they dragged her to the platform, she didn't scream she only looked at him. Her eyes locked onto his, wide and terrified, not for herself, but for their daughters. "Take care of them," she whispered through trembling lips, her voice cracking like dry wood. Her eyes then searched for her girls. She smiled through tears, tried to look brave, even as the noose settled around her throat. Her last glance was not of fear, but of love ,raw, aching love and then the platform dropped.
He watched ,helpless,as they hanged his wife.
He screamed, struggled, tried to reach her, but his body was too weak. He was held back, his daughters too. They were forced to watch as the light left her eyes.
When it was over, he didn't cry. He didn't scream. He simply knelt, face toward the ground, as if his soul had been ripped from his chest. His body shook not from anger but from something colder,emptiness. He muttered her name again and again under his breath, barely audible, like a broken prayer. His chains weren't the only things holding him down. He didn't even hear his daughters weeping. He was there, but he wasn't. He was gone.
The youngest sobbed uncontrollably, pulling on her father's arm, begging him to wake up, to do something but he didn't move. The eldest,just a child herself,pulled her sister close, shielding her eyes when the rope tightened. She didn't cry. Her face was dry, her lips tight, but her eyes? Her eyes were the eyes of someone who had just lost everything. She didn't say a word. She just stared at the place where her mother had stood, and then at her father ,the man she once thought could protect them.After that, they weren't even allowed to bury her. The guards knocked him out cold and dumped him in the desert with his children. No food. No water nothing to survive on in the desert.
The king leaned forward on his throne, his lips curling into something too calm, too composed for what he had just done. "She dies with no honor," he said quietly, not even addressing the crowd. It was meant for the warlord alone. He smiled not with joy, but with control. It wasn't enough to punish the man physically; he wanted to break him from the inside out, piece by piece, until there was nothing left to ruin.
When he came to, the sun was scorching. His skin burned. His thoughts were consumed with rage but his body couldn't move. He lay there, dazed, hollow. Useless. Even his daughters meant nothing to him in that moment. He didn't check on them. Didn't speak. Didn't move. For two days, he was a ghost.Lying in the sand, unable to speak, unable to move, he watched his daughters suffer beside him and in the hollow silence of that desert, a thought took root. It was small, bitter, and full of poison.