Make Your Move Katherine

Regrets

Oscar

Oscar, unseen by all; thanks to Ju, looked at Katherine as she raided the royal kitchen, which was on the floor beneath their quarters, mere minutes after he left her. The three cooks looked uncomfortable as they stood at the side of the counter where Katherine had told them to stay put, emphasizing more by the motions of her hands. She was tearing open a packet of some sort and placed its contents into the tiny saucepan. She stirred and covered it for a few minutes before she placed a cover on the counter and placed the pan on it and grabbed chopsticks before sitting down on one of the stools and began eating right there.

She drank directly out of a- he squinted his eyes- a Pepsi can in-between her noisy slurping of the noodles. He used to drink it also when he was studying in Armedia but not often and never an entire can. It’s a taste he’d never acquired. His preference was not the limited caffeine but that of the strong variety- coffee.

Oscar shook his head. Whatever the hell was that she was eating smelled okay but certainly not suitable for a queen. He remembered the startled look that came over the cook’s face when Kat had used the same stool minutes earlier and climbed up on it to take one of the packets down.

It seemed that the head cook had been unaware of it for she stared at Katherine’s hands in surprise then in accusation at the other two who looked away. Hmm, it seemed that the assistants were aware of Katherine’s bad taste in food.

Ah, instant noodles. He looked at her as she finished the meal, noisily and frowned as she washed the dishes amidst the old woman’s argument of her to leave everything. Eight others walked in to prepare the food for the royals and stood aside quietly, heads lowered, hands clasped in front of them until Katherine was finished.

“Good morning,” she said as she turned around. “Have a great day ahead,” she smiled at them as she left the kitchen. He looked at the bewildered-looking people as they gawked at their queen. Even they were uncomfortable with her.

Yes, she is very unsuited as queen, Nuwa was perfect.

He had felt slightly guilty at first when he had finished with the child human trafficker and made his way to the room and saw the chaos there. She had messed up the floor with her vomit and the guard told him that Anthony had taken her away. He was annoyed with Anthony then and all guilt left until this morning when she still hadn’t woken up. He almost felt sorry for her.

But a bigger thought had plagued him; should he take her to the dragon king now? They should have a way to prove she was indeed his promised queen. But that would look bad on his part- for who accepts a sick gift? Then how would he explain to his people about the queen's disappearance?

And who would accept a used gift? Although he hadn’t actually used her, but they were legally married, in all rights. He’ll omit that part when he hands her over to Xu Kai.

And his phoenix still hadn’t merged with him yet. But did he really need it? His father was fine without any other power- just your everyday vampire king. But he was human again…

Decisions, decisions...he almost made for preparations for the trip too, but she had been such a pitiful sight.

Just looking at her now, confirmed he was correct. Just why was she chosen for him? Why the Dragon King and then him? And who did the choosing anyway? He just had to go with what the mage and the church came up with? A church that was driven by a God that he was sure mocked him. Why would this God give him the strength to protect his people but have him drink their blood to survive?

Was God a friend or foe?

Oscar thought he was just another pawn to them; a plain stupid i***t that they chose to do their work- after all, wasn’t this a curse placed on his ancestors centuries ago because of their betrayal? So why punish them and also choose who they should spend their life with?

The young king was hell-bent on changing history and had vowed to marry whom he wanted when he grew up but they were not having it. He had vowed to reject any other person that wasn’t Nuwa but he had gotten so sick that he almost died. Had it not been for Ju, he just might have been dead. And his father’s health deteriorated because of his foolishness too.

Ju told him that the earth with his people would be next if he didn’t agree to the marriage and so he did. But when he saw it was Katherine, he was enraged and refused to until his father had a massive heart attack- a vampire having a heart attack! He was forced to agree to it and Nuwa suffered because of it and his father had suffered for lack of it.

He was then crowned king and just weeks after that they realized the former King had not taken a drop of blood. It was then they realized too that he was becoming human once again.

Oscar gritted his teeth as he looked at the woman as she passed through him in the hallway, and he wanted to smack her. Following her into her quarters, she switched on the light for the first time since she woke up. She stared at the tv; he had placed it there while she slept but she didn’t switch it on as he expected. Just as she had earlier when she first saw it, she frowned and walked away into the other room where she picked up a pencil and started a sketch.

A house. A typical house too. On a hill with a porch- like those farmers have in the long-ago movies. She even drew a rocking chair with an old man with a grass stalk in his mouth. He was impressed just as he was by her other sketches. He had no idea she had talent- except singing. But then again, he was a young teen, in love back then- a frog croaking sound coming from her might have been the loveliest thing he heard.

It had been his second day at the school and Kat had been on stage with a guitar singing a county song about clear skies, for a talent show and he fell in love with her braided hair and crooked smile. He had spent that night searching Bob Marley songs, for that’s what the female announcer had said she sang when the crowd booed her off stage. The MC had been wrong.

Another month went by before he saw her again and it was on a school trip. She had moved to another school for her mother had remarried she had said and Oscar switched to her new school too.

He regretted it so much now.

Looking at her now, he wondered if she was pretending again. Why hadn’t she bothered with the television she had been begging for, or the phone she craved for. She really was just a spoilt brat after all. He knew she just wanted the devices to send messages to her people- probably this Simon she lied about. She didn’t think he knew about this network thing where you didn’t need an actual app to use it. A desktop version was all you needed to access most things now- he knew.

Hah.

He would protect her just as he stated earlier but only because he needed her for his transformation to be completed. He would treat her as his queen for his people needed to see he was a kind and just ruler too but that was only until he handed her over to his father’s cousin.

She stared at the drawing in front of her silently for the longest time and it was only when he heard her loud sniff and saw her tear off a paper towel from its roll on the table by her side, blowing her nose, did he realize she had been crying.

He c****d his head. This was interesting.

He took a seat waiting for her to mumble a curse or something but she didn’t. She just cried. He figured it must be something females did when they faced a trauma or something. A beep was heard and her head perked up. She wiped her face and blew into the disposable towel before heading out to the other room where the beep came from.

Ah her phone.

She discarded her snot contents into a wastebasket as she opened the message. A shocked expression washed across her face before she typed and then a smile appeared on her face, so of course, he was curious as to what text was sent by Simon. Standing behind her but careful to not touch her he looked down at the screen and saw her typing a reply, ‘She’s so cute. I'm sorry I missed the birth dad. IMU. Do you want to video chat?’

Above that, he saw a message from her father. ‘It’s fine. Enjoy your marriage. Hope she gets a playmate soon.’

From Kat. ‘I missed it. I wanted to be there.’

The first on-screen message was a picture of a baby and a message from ’Dad’, ‘Look who’s here. You’re a big sister Kat.’

And then her phone rang.

She answered the video call then switched on the lights. Oscar heard her say her face was swollen for she had now gotten up and it was after 5 am which was technically the truth, minus the crying part. He observed her face mostly when she smiled and awed when they played a sound of a thumping to her.

“She’s so strong,” he heard her father say and Oscar realized it was the faint sounds of the thumping heartbeats of Katherine’s half-sister who had just been born. Oscar stepped behind her and looked at the phone’s screen and it appeared that they were in the hospital still. Miriam was holding a sleeping newborn in her arms and a stereoscope was pressing onto the child’s chest by Katherine’s father.

Katherine’s stepmother had been a nurse he knew when she met her father. Michael Turner had been newly cancer-free then and married the woman less than a year later, according to the file Anthony had given him.

“Her heartbeat is beautiful dad,” Kat said and he heard the stepmother crying. “I wish I had been there.”

Katherine wanted to see her sister being born? She missed her father? She loved her stepmother? It was so strange to see her this way- well even murders had feelings of some sort he guessed.

Ten minutes later the call ended when Katherine told them to get some rest for the baby’s sake. Then she lied and said she would see them soon- he knew it was a lie for when she hung up, she said, “I don’t think I’ll see you again dad. I’m sorry.”

She had accepted her fate.

Then she burst into heart-wrenching sobs until she slept away. Oscar took her phone and searched her messages. She hadn’t bothered to reply to any emails. No had she checked any messages except her father’s.