Princess of Ruin

Chapter 11 - Realizations Pt. 2

Aria

“Emery,” I finally managed to say after I recollected myself. “What is Her Royal Majesty doing in our suite?” The tea I’d spilled had started to seep through my blanket and into my socks, but I barely noticed the discomfort with everything else going on. 

“She is here to ensure that I am still as healthy as I can be, which, if you ask me, is horribly hypocritical of her.” Emery paused to glare at the Queen of Ekta, who stared right back with icy blue eyes nearly identical to Emery’s. “Though she could have at least attempted to disguise herself so that she might have avoided terrifying my roommate so thoroughly.”

“Apologies,” Her Majesty said. She turned to me, giving me a gentle smile. “And what is your name, dear?”

My mind went entirely blank as I tried my hardest to remember all the etiquette lessons Mom taught Flynn and I before sending us off to school. “A-Aria,” I finally stammered, blushing from embarrassment. My childhood hero, my inspiration for learning to make something of my ability, was standing in my living room, and I was finding it annoyingly difficult to form words. 

“That’s a lovely name. It’s nice to meet you, Aria,” she greeted, giving me a very diplomatic dip of her head. My heart fluttered, recognizing the dignified ruler I’d seen on TV since she won her crown when I was little. 

“I-It’s an honor to meet you, Your Majesty,” I managed to squeak.

“Please, call me Elle. All my friends do.” My blush deepened, and I buried my face further in the blanket. “Emery,” Her Majesty continued, turning back towards the couch with an entirely different demeanor. “How much does your little friend know?” 

“We may as well tell her everything,” Emery muttered, fiddling with the blanket between two gloved fingers. She was frowning, very clearly not pleased about her decision, but there was also a certain amount of resignation on her face. Or perhaps that was just exhaustion. She was even paler than usual, skin shimmering with a thin sheen of sweat, and I could hear her wheezing even from several feet away. 

“If that’s what you want…” Her Majesty took in a deep breath, looking equally displeased by the situation. “...then I suppose that’s what will happen.” She put on her best smile, the one I always saw her use when news reporters and interviewers asked her questions that she clearly didn’t want to answer. “Jackie, darling, could you brew us some tea? This may take a while.” 

*

“So,” Her Majesty began from where she was sitting on the couch next to Emery, holding a mug of tea in her hands. “Emery, where should we begin?” I clutched my newly-filled mug of tea, waiting for it to stop steaming quite so much. The smell of fresh mint was clearing my head, and I found myself far more aware of the situation than I had been before, which was fortunate, because it appeared as though I were finally about to discover the secrets Emery had fought so hard to keep from us. 

“Let’s start with when King Gabriel found me,” Emery responded. She’d managed to haul herself into an upright position and had adjusted her bathrobe so that it covered more, but I still caught her swaying every so often. 

“Right. Aria, you’re likely too young to remember the rule of King Gabriel, but have your parents told you anything about him?” Her Majesty asked, folding her legs elegantly. Mom always said she did that to make people forget she was a commoner by birth.

“Yeah!” I said eagerly, immediately regretting it when my throat tickled, and I burst into a coughing fit. “They always said he was a rather schismatic king,” I continued after a few moments and a sip of still-too-hot tea. 

Nurse Jackie snorted from where she was leaning against the fridge in the kitchen, waiting for the second pot of tea to boil. “Damn right he was. Either you loved the man, or you hated him. It’s no wonder someone decided to assassinate him twelve years ago.”

“Actually,” Her Majesty said with an awkward cough. “He wasn’t killed because of a political decision he made.” She gave Emery a pointed look, and the white-haired girl averted her gaze, staring instead out the window next to the couch, which looked over the snowy campus. “A group of rebels that called themselves the ‘Shadows of Justice’ discovered that the king was in possession of a certain individual who, given the proper training, could bring down the entire monarchy.”

My eyebrows shot up, and turned my gaze to Emery, who’d started playing with her gloves. “King Gabriel was harboring a five-year-old girl he’d found in the rubble of what used to be a hospital building. And as it turned out, this girl had the ability to destroy anything she touched.”

“The tragedy of Mumford Park,” I breathed, suddenly recalling something my parents once talked about with their friends. 

“You’ve heard of it? You don’t seem old enough for that.” Her Majesty asked, sounding a bit surprised. I was filled with a little jolt of pride at that. 

“I’m not. It happened before I was born, but my parents talked about it once while my twin and I were playing. They didn’t think we could hear them. According to what I remember about it, a little over seventeen years ago, the hospital in Mumford Park Square suddenly collapsed into black ash. When the authorities searched the premises, there was no trace of bodies. It was assumed that the more than five-hundred people inside perished in the freak accident, leaving no survivors.” 

“Well, now you know what truly occurred,” Emery muttered, fiddling with her hair now. I’d never seen her look quite so uncomfortable. 

“When King Gabriel found Emery,” Her Majesty continued, “he wasn’t quite sure why she was still alive. But in what I can only describe as a heat-of-the-moment decision, he took her back to the Old Palace, where he named her Inanis, for the void and nothingness that she emerged from, and he raised her. It wasn’t until she started walking around on her own that palace employees began to discover little black handprints, almost like burns or ink marks, left wherever the little girl went.” 

My mind suddenly flashed back to in the bathroom, when I found Emery. There was a handprint on the wall, almost as though someone had dipped their hand in ink and then dragged it down the white walls. 

“It was then that one of Gabriel’s scientists suggested he have some tests run on the little girl to figure out what was going on. After numerous rounds of testing, they discovered that she was capable of destroying and killing with hardly any effort and that she’d been the one to destroy the hospital. Unfortunately, Gabriel was a paranoid man, and he didn’t take especially kindly to this. When she was only three, the girl was locked away in a window-less room with only one door, left all alone until the day I was coronated.”

“Apparently,” Emery said, speaking up for the first time in several minutes, “Someone in the palace staff leaked information regarding my existence to the rebels. They got it into their heads that I’d make the ideal weapon for their cause. The only flaw in their plan was that they killed the only person in the entire palace who had the key to my room, and they never thought to search him for it.”

“So imagine my surprise when I showed up at the Old Palace, having won the tournament to become the first common-blooded queen, and the first thing I was told was that the late King Gabriel had been keeping a child locked up all by herself in a room. So, naturally, I went to investigate. And then that little girl tried to kill me.” I gasped, turning to Emery with wide and horrified eyes.

“You tried to kill Her Majesty?” I cried, ignoring the protests of my scratchy throat. “How could you?” A ghost of a smile appeared on Emery’s face as she gave me an amused look. 

“I hadn’t used my ability in almost three years, Aria,” she explained. “The room was specially made so that it was impervious to any abilities, and so my power had been building up within me the entire time I was imprisoned. When that door opened, I just couldn’t hold it in any longer. I was only a little over five years old, and I wanted out. No matter who I had to go through, I just wanted to get out of that room.”

“So she ran. She ran out of the room and slammed the door behind her, trapping me inside.” Her Majesty frowned down at her hands. “When I finally managed to get out again, that room was the only part of the Old Palace left standing. And other than Emery, I was the only one left alive. And that’s when I got myself a daughter.”

“I’m not your daughter,” Emery croaked from her place on the couch. The few moments of speaking seemed to have taken all of the energy out of her, and she was leaning back with one gloved hand pressed over her eyes.  “You’re not my mother. All you’ve done is feed me for twelve years. You didn’t even teach me how to read.”

Her Majesty’s eyes narrowed at the white-haired girl, and a muscle worked in her jaw. I shrank back, having heard terrifying stories about the Queen’s wrath. Emery, however, did not seem especially cowed. Instead, she glared right back.

“You ungrateful little brat! Why, I should-”

“I think I may leave now,” Nurse Jackie muttered, slipping out of the suite and sending me a pitying look. 

“You should what? Kill me?” Emery yelled, having drawn upon some hidden reserve of strength. The bickering pair fell silent, each glaring daggers at the other. 

“I think that’s something we should go into another day, perhaps when your friend isn’t quite so ill.” I tilted my head to one side, confused. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of the door, which almost looked as though it had been opened a crack. I shrugged it off, though, assuming that the nurse had simply forgotten to close it when she left. 

“No, no we’re not going into this another day. You don’t get to leave this pretending that you’re a good and responsible mother. Sure, you’ve made me a few tools to help keep my ability under control, but that doesn’t come anywhere close to outweighing the fact that you’ve been trying to kill me for the past seven years!” My attention whipped back to Emery. The tea was wearing off, and while some logical part of my brain was aware that I should be shocked by this, the feverish portion was just making me sleepy. The result was halfway between a dropped jaw and a yawn.

Her Majesty shoved to her feet suddenly, startling me back into mild lucidity, and shouted, “You’re already dying, Emery! I’m just trying to make it happen a little faster.” 

A gasp sounded from outside of the door, and it swung open to reveal Mikela, who had one hand clamped over her mouth, while the other was clutching a bag of groceries so hard her knuckles were going pale. “I-is this true?” she managed to squeak out. 

“I’ll leave you with this mess, Emery,” Her Majesty grumbled as she gathered up her belongings and shoved past Mikela, diplomacy long gone. 

“Well,” Emery said in a resigned tone. “This ought to be fun.”