Conquering His Cold Heart

The guard gave a bow and immediately announced the presence of the King and the Queen.

“Oh, yes, please come in.” They heard Alexander’s voice from the other side of the door and soon, Alexander himself opened the door and welcomed the two of them inside his chamber.

Caspian and Anastasia walked inside the room and all three of them made themselves comfortable on the sofa that faced each other.

“Are you feeling okay?” Alexander asked Anastasia as soon as she sat down.

Anastasia gave a smile and nodded. “Yes, brother. I was feeling a little dizzy a while ago. But now, I feel completely fine.”

“That’s good then,” Alexander sighed in relief and rested his back on the backrest of the sofa.

After that, a deafening silence fell in the room. All three of them were waiting for each other to bring out the topic that they had been avoiding discussing during their travel.

When no one took the initiative for quite some time, Anastasia cleared her throat and then spoke to her brother, “I heard that you lost all of your guards in the battle. Are you… are you okay?”

.....

Alexander pressed his lips into a thin line and shook his head. His pupils dilated when he said in a breaking voice, “They didn’t deserve such gruesome death, Anna. I couldn’t even look at their dead bodies properly before sending them home.”

Anastasia didn’t know much about the battle, except the fact that her brother’s guards were all killed. She didn’t know the depth of it because Caspian and the others didn’t talk about the battle when they were around her.

She lowered her head when she saw her brother’s devastated expression. And she expressed her sympathy, “I am really sorry that you lost all of them. I express my deepest condolences.”

Anastasia then turned to look at her husband and again asked the question that her husband had been avoiding answering, “Do we have any information on who those attackers were? What did they want from us? Were they trying to rob us or something?”

Alexander widened his eyes and looked at the two of them in surprise. ‘He hasn’t told her yet?’ he thought to himself.

Caspian took a deep breath and kept on looking at Anastasia. He hadn’t shared what he knew about the attackers because he wanted her to hear it from her brother. If he was to tell her that Everard was the one to send those men after them, he feared that Anastasia would accuse him of speaking ill about Everard because of his jealousy.

So, even now, instead of answering Anastasia himself, he looked at Alexander, hoping that he would volunteer to give the answer.

Alexander took the hint and then replied to his sister’s question, “I heard from one of those people that they were attacking us to avenge their King.”

“Avenge their King?” Anastasia looked very confused as to who that King was. She even thought that it was some King that Caspian had angered in the past.

It took some real courage for Alexander to speak against Everard, who was his best friend since they were kids. However, he didn’t want to keep Anastasia in the dark. He wanted her to avoid him at any cost.

So, he gulped and then clarified which King he was talking about. “Yes. They came to kill us just because they felt that Everard was humiliated in front of everyone.”

“T-They came to kill us because Everard felt humiliated?” Anastasia repeated what her brother said to her. Her heartbeat began escalating with rage and confusion. And she asked while looking at her brother through her teary eyes, “Everard wanted us dead because his ego was hurt? Is that what you were saying?”

She turned to look at her husband and grabbed his arm. She shook Caspian’s arm and asked him in a shaking voice, “Please tell me that’s not true… Why would Everard do that? He was the one who wronged me. He doesn’t have the right to get angry after what he did to me in that hall full of people!”

Her heart ached when Caspian also confirmed what Alexander had said. “That’s true. It was confirmed that they were Everard’s men.”

Anastasia covered her mouth with her palm and shook her head in utter disbelief. She hadn’t even imagined in her dream that Everard would do such a thing. “How could he do that?” She looked at her brother again and asked in a whisper, “He didn’t even spare you? He was going to kill us all because he got beaten in front of his guests? That… that doesn’t even make any sense!”

Alexander wiped the sweat that was starting to trickle down from his temple. His face looked as if a dark cloud had made itself at home. “I also don’t want to believe that. The Everard we know would never do something so stupid. But…”

“But what?” Anastasia frowned and asked in rage, “But because he is a King now, he suddenly shed his skin like a snake?”

Alexander clenched his jaw and gritted through his teeth, “The snake would at least look like its older self even after shedding a layer of its skin. A snake would still be a snake.” He looked at Caspian with a questioning gaze and mumbled, “But I don’t think he is the same Everard we once knew.”

Though Anastasia got the gist of what his brother was trying to say, she felt as though there was some more depth to his words.

She wiped her eyes to clear her vision that had blurred due to tears and asked Alexander while knitting her brows, “You know something, don’t you? What is it?”