Chapter Forty-Four: Rather Than Loved…
1610 Words
I pushed Étienne harshly off my body.
He took a few steps back, but his body maintained its rigidity. He was a head taller, but his strength lay in, like Regina, divine mana as opposed to swordsmanship.
“You think this is foreplay??”
“I missed you? Four years!! Four years, Arusei-!”
“You miss me? Miss me?! Are you socially inept or just spoilt?? I despise you.”
Étienne stilled at my words, and unlike before, his expression contorted to panic.
“No! no, you don’t understand.”
He began, his voice raspy with emotions I did not care to place.
“Oh…because you think…No, my love, that was a misunderstanding!”
Hope filled his voice.
“I loved you then, no, I still love yo-.”
“Yuck!”
The words escaped me as nausea-inducing bile clamoured my throat.
“Did- did you hear me? I said even back then, I loved you.”
His smile fluttered. Étienne ruffled his hair as though desperately containing emotions he could not explain, then continued.
“You don’t understand. You were supposed to get yourself out of it with your mind.”
His gaze turned upwards to my forehead.
“That beautiful head that managed to make all the imperial powers work under me. You- you were supposed to amaze me! Like you always do! And then I would proclaim you-“
‘Ge-t myself out of it?’
‘I-I was breaking…slowly dying while he thought I was…amusing?’
“So- so the imperial bullying? When the Viscount’s wife ordered for the thrashing of my maid when I refused to let her whip me, when the Queen forced me to swim in the pond during winter to retrieve her ring... when I-”
“You handled it perfectly! You handle everything perfectly! The way you caused the erase of the Viscount’s family line by inserting forged documents that linked them with slave trading-, or the way you stood up to mother, you always-,”
Étienne’s words dulled as the ringing in my ears grew louder.
Lilo, my poor maid, lost her hands to the Viscountess’s schemes.
If Étienne had said something…anything, the entire incident would have been avoided. I could have saved her, poor sweet Lilo.
“I was wrong, okay, you were right, Regina is not you. I see that now. I shouldn't have threatened you with death. If I had known that I would lose you-,”
“You sliced my tongue….”
My voice was barely a whisper, but he heard me.
“No…no, I mean, you kept asking for a divorce, saying that I should just wait for you to cross the border…where? Where would you go without me?”
When I said nothing, his expression grew nervous.
“You see, you- you provoked me. I told you that we three should be happy together, you- I mean th- the pope said that Regina-”
He continued, but his words…for some reason, I couldn’t hear them.
I couldn’t tell if it was because he made no sense or that I had read him wrong all…
Was she…had Arusei been his Jester all this time?
“So the reason you married Regina-,”
“I love Regina, she is easy on the eye and she, she comes from a good background, so she clears your faults…I mean, I will make her my Empress and you, my Queen. She will birth the successors while you and I maintain the power of the throne.”
‘crazy…’
“That’s not so bad. You always told me you were uncomfortable with the idea of children. I- I swear to you, Arusei! I will do things differently!!”
‘Utterly insane…’
A tear trickled down my eye, but before it tainted the floor, Étienne’s chest burst open.
Warmblood splattered against the white walls. It was more pronounced on the silver of my dress, but I felt it more when unwarranted warmth caressed my cheek.
The vines sprouting from my fingers reverted to nails, but I had yet to blink, or process the scene before me.
“Eh…? Ar- Arus…”
He tried to utter my name, also shocked by the situation as though he never believed I could hurt him in a thousand years.
Before achieving his closure, his body slumped lifeless on the cold peach bathroom tiles.
There was no sound other than the harshness of my breathing left behind.
‘Where would you go without me?’
His voice rang bitterly in my ears.
‘You provoked me.’
You said Regina was the happiness that I could never give.
‘I told you that we three should be happy together.’
At every turn, you told me that I needed to leave for you to be happy, that I was nothing but a mass of bad luck.
That the only way you could love me is if I could erase my birth.
I stood and listened then because I did not think of myself as ‘Arusei’ but ‘Hafsa’, so at the end of the day, I could still look you in the face and whisper, ‘I love you’.
But was it love or a coping mechanism?
{ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR}
In an unprecedented manner, the system flooded both my auditory and visual senses in a repeated message with overlapping screens.
{ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR}
Due to the intensity of the utterances, I tried to manually plug my ears, but even that did not help alleviate the noise playing bitterly between my ears.
I was brought to my knees in pain due to its loudness, next to Étienne’s lifeless b-
‘F*ck! Étienne is a prince! I have just killed the fourth prince?!’
{ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR} {ERROR}
“Shut up!! I need to think!!”
I yelled to the blaring system that seemed to grow louder with every message until finally, it stopped.
{THE HOST IS NOT PERMITTED TO KILL A LEAD CHARACTER} {THE HOST IS NOT PERMITTED TO KILL A LEAD CHARACTER}{THE HOST IS NOT PERMITTED TO KILL A LEAD CHARACTER} {THE HOST IS NOT PERMITTED TO KILL A LEAD CHARACTER}{THE HOST IS NOT PERMITTED TO KILL A LEAD CHARACTER} {THE HOST IS NOT PERMITTED TO KILL A LEAD CHARACTER}
{CALCULATING SOLUTION…}
{SOLUTION FOUND…}
Fwoosh
The screens vanished, and so did the chatter.
I was still on my knees when suddenly, my point of view altered, as though I was falling even though I was stable in near all fours.
I landed in Ettiene’s puddle of blood, then shortly after, my headless body followed.
*
*
*
“Better than Elora, whoever heard of a princess succeeding the throne.”
‘Huh?’
“Women don’t lead. The results of this race have already been decided.”
My hand gripped my throat.
“I wonder why they decided to do it this way.”
It was still attached to my body.
“You didn’t hear…? Étienne refused to marry the p********e's child. Apparently, she helped the former headmaster of the academy embezzle, but the Emperor favoured her, so this was the way to appease him.”
My gaze flew frantically to Étienne’s.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to find that she and the headmaster were involved romant-... what’s wrong with the Prince?”
“Why did he stop halfway?”
Étienne’s hands flew to his chest, then finally, his gaze met mine.
‘He remembers…’
The chatter in the hall grew more lively at the pause until…
“What is he staring at?”
“The p********e?”
‘Ah f*ck!’
I turned on my heel to the exit.
“Stop! As your highness, I am addressing you all. It is rude to depart amid a speech.”
The guards near the door dropped their spears to block my path, and a direct route of gazes swarmed my frame.
“Will you stop at nothing to ruin Regina’s firsts?”
Finor, with bitterness in his tone, said, approaching me.
“Ruin her firsts? Since you cannot shame his highness, you project your anger on me? And what have I done? I was standing right next to you!!”
“What have you done? You have interrupted ‘his highness’s speech!!”
“He stopped talking long before I-,”
‘Why am I defending myself?’
I halted my words mid-sentence, a warm sense of fatigue coddling my lower abdomen.
“Grow.”
Tiny buds of skullcap* sprouted from where I stood to the tallest walls in the hall where Étienne and Regina stood proudly in what felt like only a millisecond; the buds germinated wherever they had sprouted then blossomed, revealing deep magenta petals.
“What are yo-,”
Finor began, but just as soon as he did, his eyes fluttered shut, and he collapsed heavily to the floor.
Gasps filled the hall, but they barely had time to process because one by one, they fell.
This is why I kept Arusei’s power hidden.
She, on all counts, was too powerful.
I, on all counts, am too powerful.
So rather than loved, let me be feared.
Skullcap (Scutellaria Baicalenisis), common name Chinese skullcap, is used to treat lung complications. Side effects (In some); irregular heartbeats, tics, drowsiness, and mental confusion.
- Writer
