Story:Kings of Strife/Part 37

Part Thirty-Seven
He opened the to door to her personal chamber, the only room that the staircase behind her throne led to, and found her inside. “I didn’t expect that you’d actually be here,” the Crimson Death mumbled. “I was beginning to think the workers had forgotten to give you a bed.”

“Did you know that I haven’t slept in here? Not once.” Vainia Sestrum stood on her the sill of her gigantic window wearing only panties and a ragged t-shirt, and her brown hair was pulled into a bun atop her head. She did not move, and the dark cityscape of Shorekeep stretched out before her.

Gin Taoris – known as Constantus Veit in these halls - walked into the room and closed the door behind him. “You’re entirely too free around me.” He tilted his head and looked down at his self-proclaimed queen. “I can’t understand you sometimes.”

Vainia had no answer. She seemed thoroughly enticed by the unmoving yet lit up world in front of her. “All that I look upon is mine,” she whispered. “This city. The world. All mine.”

“Not just yet,” the Crimson Death stated. He crossed his arms and started to pace around the room. “I heard of your plan from Tasshon. It is… bold.”

“You disapprove.”

“It will be a glorious battle. I am not qualified to speak of anything but war.”

“And this is war. Are you not pleased?” Vainia turned her head slightly towards the Crimson Death, her Knight.

He chose his words carefully. “What pleases me may not be what is right for you… My Queen. What excites a savage exile should not be the same hobbies for a ruler of all the world.”

“I have not exiled you, Veit. To whom else could you call your banner states?”

“Still bothering with such a disguise even in the most private of areas?” The man in the red cloak smiled humorlessly. “I’m afraid my home doesn’t exist anymore.”

Vainia turned back towards the city. She did not speak for a long while. “I miss it sometimes. Zeta, I mean. I hated it while I was there and I hate it now, but the Academy was… Different. It was not a home, but it was a sanctuary. A temple for knowledge, isolation, and self-improvement. It was what I needed.”

The Knight looked down. “Do you want me to apologize?”

“No.” Vainia shook her head. “I had to leave when I did, else I wouldn’t have taken hold of all the opportunities I did. I hold no ill will towards you, Sir Constantus.”

“I am not a knight,” Veit stated as he ran his hands through his messy mane of hair. “Not truly. I have done nothing noble.”

“You saved my life. More than once. If that isn’t noble enough to have my honor, I don’t know what is.” Vainia got nothing in response. She sighed and knelt down into a squat, still balancing on the window sill, and allowed her forehead to lean on the strong glass overlooking the city. “I wonder, often… What did I do to change you? Why me?”

“…I’m sorry?”

“Come now, you don’t have anything to hide from me. I’ve seen what you do to people. I remember you killed that annoying boy back in Zeta.” Turo was his name, right? Vainia didn’t even remember. It all felt so long ago. “You enjoyed when we saw that bloodbath in Phenicks. Hell, you’ve been borderline torturing everyone who wants to be a soldier beneath my name. I know what kind of depravities make your blood boil… So why leave all that behind? What was it about me that made you return to your human side?”

She was honestly curious. Many a night would have went sleepless – if she had the time to sleep in the first place – as she thought of the issue. What had Taoris done or suffered to make him this way? What was it about her that suppressed his urges? Both of them had confessed to needing one another, but the connection had occurred so spontaneously that she often found herself looking back at past events in disbelief.

The Crimson Death took a while to respond, and when he did speak, his voice was hoarse and cracked, as if speaking came difficult to him now. “You remind me of someone I once had. I’ve long since lost her, and I have no hope of gaining her back. It’s impossible. Everytime I see that twinkle in your eyes…” He stopped speaking, and Vainia turned back to look at her Knight. He had turned away from her, but his back shook and his biceps visibly flexed. She could see his pain.

Vainia stood up and started towards him with concern, her bare feet quietly padding on the black seastone floor. Veit flinched at hearing her and backed away towards the door.

“Please,” the Knight said with a broken tone. “Don’t me anymore of who I am or what I do. I do all for you. I always will. That is my love. Do not return it. Just take it.”

The queen stopped walking, her mind racing with indecision. She hugged her arms around herself and looked down. This, like every other time Veit broke down, was not a situation she could predict or wit herself out of. This inadequateness irritated her, but being angry at herself wasn’t going to solve anything. She turned, a cold scowl back on her face. If anything else, she could be his queen.

“Why is it that you have visited me this night?” she demanded of him simply.

The Knight did not turn back to face her, but instead removed an item from his waist satchel and tossed it to her bed. She looked at it, but did not move. “I bring you a gift,” Veit said, “I found it on the broken shards of the damaged harbor. Where the riots took place. It was in a chest inside a sinking ship, hidden. It has a power I recognize.”

“An artifact?”

“A weapon.”

Vainia twirled a stray curl coming from atop her ear before yawning. “I will succeed in Icarun without it, though your efforts are appreciated. I thank you, my Knight. Rest well this night, for I have further business for you.”

Now Veit whirled, staring at her with his big blue eyes red and puffy. Besides that, he was unaffected; if anything, his voice seemed to contort in rage. “Will I not be accompanying you to your battle?!”

The queen looked up at him with a tilted head. “Aren’t you the one who dislikes repeating himself?”

“No! You can’t do this, not again!” He stepped towards her, his big vein-covered hands curling into tight fists. “I have endured this twice, and two times too many. I will not be left behind a third time!”

Vainia’s eyebrow twitched, and she crossed her arms. “Are you presuming to give me orders?”

“Cut the noble bullshit out and listen to me!” Veins began to protrude from his neck. “He’ll be there. I know he will. I sense it. I need this battle. And you need me. Tasshon is still just an apprentice, and a mere child! He is not mighty enough to protect you from all harm!”

“There is no other who is as useful as you are to my cause. No other has been as instrumental to it,” Vainia muttered as she coldly turned and started walking back towards the window. This was proceeding as planned. She could not comfort him, she could not embrace him, and she could not love him… But she could enrage him. She could give him a purpose, a way to let out his energy and emotions. He might end up hating her, resenting her even, but he would not leave or pursue her. Perhaps that was for the better.

“Even saying that, you would leave me behind? You would even send me off somewhere, away from where I am needed?!”

A laugh fell from Vainia’s lips, a laugh that danced through the window that the young queen now stood in front of once again and a laugh that teased onto the wind that blew through nighttime Shorekeep. She did not smile and she felt no joy, but she laughed. “Do you know what I love the most in the world, Taoris? What I adore?” Only silent seething was her answer. She continued. “It is how unexpendable you think you are to me.”

The Crimson Death’s face fell. His fists melted into open hands. If it were anyone else, he would have never found enough ways to torture them sufficiently. But this was the one person he could not kill. The one person who reminded him of what he had done, who he had loved, and what he had been through.

“You will go to Honris on the morrow and speak to its highest level of government. You will tell them that I demand their absolute allegiance and cooperation with any and all my demands. If they deny me, you have free reign to exercise all of your urges upon them.” She removed the pins holding her bun in place and allowed her brown hair to melt onto her shoulders. “Do you understand?”

Constantus Veit nodded, as if she could see, and turned. “For the Queen’s glory,” he said with defeat in his voice, and left the Queen’s chambers.

Vainia laughed once again – without a hint of joy.

*****

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