The orange of the evening fell onto the dark green leaves of the redwood trees and made them appear much more lively.
Under this refreshing glow, Rion was making his way towards his parents’ hut.
After the back-and-forth with Marin for about half an hour, he had managed to make Marin agree to Balthar teaching him, which meant he had officially become a sub-squad leader.
But, he had yet to receive a hut for himself.
Even if he had received the hut, he still would have gone to his parents’ hut because today he was determined to ask his mother about her family.
From a young age, he had heard that his mother was the victim of Stockholm syndrome, and to be fair, his father was just that good.
His father was strong, good-looking, and was named the hero of Dhaevrak. He was also one of the few who had managed to leave the Red and Black Mountains.
He had killed a dragon, yet he acted like one himself as he had kidnapped his mother, who was a princess of the Leonara kingdom.
That was all the information he had about the past of Dhaevrak, his parents and the war that supposedly ended after Haden kidnapped Lara and married her.
But no longer would he live in the shadows of an unknown past; instead, he would face the greatest obstacle in his path to knowledge — his mother.
He clenched his fists in determination and soon reached the hut.
He knocked at the door, and Lara asked from inside, "Who?"
"It’s me," he replied.
She replied in a teasing voice, "Me? But I am sitting inside."
He stared at the door with a deadpan look and muttered, "Rion..."
Lara responded with a chuckle, "Haha! Come in."
He shook his head, pulled the door and stepped in.
Just like usual, Lara was preparing vegetables and meat for tonight’s dinner.
He took a seat on his bed of fur, which was beside his parents, and watched her cut the vegetables.
The sound of the knife cutting through the vegetables and striking the wooden chopping board echoed within the silence as none of them spoke.
A few moments later, Lara asked, "What is it, Rion?"
"What?"
She turned her head towards him and replied with a slight frown, "Why aren’t you talking about your day like you usually do?"
He fell into the bed and muttered, "Today, I want you to tell me about your life."
She raised an eyebrow and asked, "What do you want me to talk about?"
He raised his head and looked into his mother’s eyes before lying back down on the bed.
"Anything, not like you’d tell me what I really want to know."
She frowned at his words and continued to prepare the dinner in silence.
A few moments later, she spoke, "I can’t tell you..."
He rose from the bed and asked in a tone edged with sadness and disappointment, "Why not?"
She fell into the lake of thoughts for a moment and spoke, "Those of Dhaevrak can’t leave the red and black mountains."
His face twisted into annoyance, and he muttered, "I know, we can’t leave because of the tribe’s law—"
"It’s not just because of the law..." She sharply cut off his words and continued, "Why do you think only a few ever managed to go down the mountains? It’s not just because of the law and telling you about the world that you would never be able to see is the same as I feeding poison to you."
She took a deep breath and added, "So you shouldn’t ask—"
"Father did it," he interrupted in a low voice.
She shut her lips into a thin line and looked at him with eyes tightened with love, regret and fear.
Love for her only son and the proof of her love for Haden, who had freed her from the gawning chains of royalty and allowed her to live the life of a human... a woman.
Regret at not being able to tell him of the vast and beautiful world outside the red and black mountains.
Finally, fear of losing him between the chains that shackled both of them into different worlds, even though they had always been together.
The weight of those eyes crushed him like a mountain, and he asked while clenching his fists to pale, "Can you at least tell me how you fell in love with father?"
She stared into his eyes and felt the guilt he had for asking such questions. She smiled and replied in a soft tone, "I first met your father during the war..."
His eyes trembled with surprise at her unexpected answer.
He focused on her words with everything as he could finally hear about the world beyond the wall that had trapped him.
"As the princess, I was to honour the royal family in the war, but before my carriage could even reach the mountains... your father kidnapped me."
Her smile brightened as the memory surfaced.
"When I woke up, I wasn’t in a cage or some dim prison. I was on one of the mountain peaks, and your father was there, cleaning his spear under the shade of a tree."
She turned to Rion, amusement crossing her face.
"Do you know what I thought when I saw him cleaning that spear?"
"What?"
"I thought he was going to kill me and eat me for dinner afterwards."
"Thahahaha!" Rion burst into laughter, clutching his stomach.
She looked at him with a smile and continued to reminisce about her first taste of freedom.
"My father loved me. He truly did. But as a princess, I had my own gilded chains — chains that I had to wear not only bravely, but proudly. Your father was the first one to ask me to let go of those chains..."
Rion turned silent and looked at her with a soft expression.
She continued cheerfully, "That day I didn’t just feel free... I felt complete, I felt like myself."
Her eyes glimmered, and she stepped inside her lake of memories.