37 | ACT II, SCENE IX

P R E V I O U S L Y

"You made your choice," I snapped. "I am never, ever, ever setting foot in Stormholt again."

DILSTON CASTLE, KNAVESMIRE, DRACNESSE.

EDWINA

"I AM SORRY, YOUR GRACE, but the Queen has given orders to-" Francis tried to reason, before Tristan angrily cut him off.

"Where did she go? Tell me!"

"Your Grace, I-"

"LORD FRANCIS! THE HIGH KING OF ENDOLLON, THE KING OF GODS,  COMMANDS YOU TO TELL HIM WHERE HIS QUEEN HAS GONE!"

"Your Grace-" Francis sounded shocked, the voices grew fainter as I leaned against the door of my room, listening.

Apollo thought I was having affairs with other men? That I was flinging around. That I had not given him an heir because I was whoring around.

He had called me slut.

I was a virgin.

It hurt. It hurt so badly that someone could make such assumptions about someone else. Because words were sharper than swords. Most of all, it hurt that people like Apollo were allowed to live. To breathe this air, to drink this world's water, to laugh and sing and talk and be free while my mother lay dead, cold and stiff in her silent grave.

It should have been his grave, not hers.

"Open the door," I heard Tristan knock the wood thrice, speaking in a low voice. It teetered on the edge of barely restrained anger and forced gentleness, yet he struggled to keep it even.

"No."

"Open the fucking door, woman. Before I break it down."

"I'm sitting right near the door, mister Valmont. So if you want me to be in one piece, I strongly suggest you rethink your decision!"

A minute passed. I heard him slide down to the floor on the other side. A scuffle of robes as he shifted and pressed his head to the other side of the door.

"Edwina."

The way he spoke my name burned into my skin, as desire crept up my spine. Some twisted part of me wanted to hear him say it again.

Ed - wi - na.

It sounded smoky, alluring, inching into my blood like a knife through butter. The temptation to open the door and let him in waved in my face, but my seething anger at Apollo put it back into its place.

"Please," he whispered from the other side.

"No," I said stubbornly, trying to keep my voice as hard as possible.

"Just hear me-"

"Just go away!"

"Look. I apologize on behalf of-"

"-I don't want your apology! Go away, Valmont!" I snapped. I was unable to make any sense of my emotions at this point - angry, sad, incredibly lonely. My head pressed against the wood, the fire in me still raging harshly. I had never been so furious my whole life.

I heard him get up from the other side.

Good riddance.

Suddenly, there was a noise from the opposite  direction of the room which was in complete darkness. I scrambled around for a dagger and a sense of safety descended on me as my hands closed around the hilt of one. I stood poised, ready. In this state I would not have thought twice about striking the person right in the heart.

Waiting, waiting.

I raised my hand.

Someone fell on to the floor, climbing in from the window and-

"Woman! It's me, idiot!" Tristan hissed, as I towered above him with my dagger in hand. He looked around in surprise, his eyes gleaming in the dark. "So you really live like a nocturnal animal?" he quipped.

"Valmont!" I fumed, "I told you to get out and leave me alone!"

He got up, rubbing his jaw where he had landed on the floor, looking at me. Even in the darkness, his white face was contorted in fury, and he was putting effort to control it.

"What did he tell you?"

"-get out!"

"No," Tristan refused blatantly. "What happened between you and Apollo? What exactly did he say to you?"

"I'm not telling you anything, Valmont! Get out of my fucking room!"

I perched myself on the edge of my four poster bed, turning away from him in a distant corner, crossing my arms. He sat down just beside me, and I clutched my shawl and dagger tighter, heart pounding.

"Go away. Please."

He tentatively put an arm on my shoulder but I shied away from his touch as he looked at me, shocked. Tristan's voice dropped to a low whisper.

"Woman," he said softly, "please. What did he tell you?"

"I don't need to talk to you."

"I am your husband."

"Please," I scoffed. "When have I ever been your wife?"

He sat silent for a minute, I could feel his shoulders squared stiffly beside me. He took a deep breath, authoritatively tilting my chin up so that I faced the full intensity of his scorching, burning gaze.

"When I married you at the altar, Edwina Valmont Tremayne," he began, "I took a vow." Tristan's voice dropped several notches and the anger completely melted off it.

He quietly wound a hand around my closed one with a demanding blaze flickering in the depths of his dark blue eyes.

"I took a vow to be there for you when no one else would. To offer you the protection of my body if necessary. To offer you my life, as your husband and your king. I may be your King, woman. But before that, I am your husband."

"You really didn't mean it, did you?" I whispered in the silence.

"I hate you," Tristan's voice was firm. "I hate you, Edwina. You hate me. That's not going to change. Not now, not ever. But what is also not going to change," he said, prying my fingers open and laying my palm flat down, "is this."

He traced a finger over the red ridge of the scar we'd both received during the Blood Oath at our wedding.

"My blood flows in your veins. And yours blood in mine."

And yet, we were the only god and goddess in Endollon who shared this strange connection.

"I took a holy vow in sight of the statue of Uranus. And even though I cannot possibly tell you how much I loathe you, I intend to keep my vow. Would you have me break it?" he questioned sternly.

I stared at the dagger in my hands, flicking it between my fingers, watching the light from outside play about the edge. How could I even talk to Tristan after what his father had said to me? After how he threatened to rape me?

"Please. I need to know what he did to you," he whispered.

I wanted to tell him, I wanted to tell him so badly.

I wasn't able to.

"You told me not to save you. I'm not trying to save you. I'm simply giving you a shoulder to lean on. You save yourself," he continued, slowly putting a hesitant hand on my shoulder.

Bit by bit, his fingers slowly wound themselves in my hair, leaving behind hot, passionate traces of passion seared on my neck.

Sometimes, it wasn't about saving the other, it was about giving them a shoulder to lean on, a safe harbor to rest as they put themself back together.

"He wanted me to... bear a Valmont child."

He looked at me with disbelief in his eyes. Eyes like the sky, shining with shock, disbelief and anger. The whiteness crept back as his face drained again of any colour it had left.

"You - you mean-"

"-yes."

His grip on me tightened to a gentle caress, shockingly warm and caring as he tried to register the unbelievable news.

"I will deal with him. Immediately."  He blinked his eyes and looked at me pleadingly. "Just - just come back with me, woman."

"I don't want a scandal. You can forget about me coming back," I hissed. If the start of my reign itself began so badly, I didn't even want to imagine what would happen next.

"I will punish him, Edwina. Believe me, please," he murmured. "We'll do it together. He'll never touch you again, I'll make sure of it, just-"

"-no."

"I swear-"

"No is a complete sentence in itself, Valmont. I don't think I need to give you an explanation," I cut in quietly, my voice gone mellow with the hurt in my heart.

"Fine," Tristan said quietly, his voice dripping with acid, stinging me. It held a mocking quality to it, as if trying to hide the hurt. I flinched at the tone as his face turned back into the white, reserved mask it always was. "Have a good night, Queen Regnant."

Then he got up from beside me and opened the door, walking out of the room as I sat there alone in the darkness.

• • • • •

AMPHITRITE

"She's pining," Llewellyn observed. We all watched my sister from the balcony, going about her work for the day with a face as cold as ice, expressionless and reserved.

She had a stack of books under one arm, was reading a letter held in the other. The Queen was plagued by a group of people appealing to her about something, only a slight nod giving any indication that she was listening.

"She's sulking," Vanessa corrected, observing them. Edwina said one word to the group of people following her, and half of them scampered away to do their tasks as she snapped orders. "She isn't a person who pines for others. She makes other people pine for her."

"Well," I reasoned, "name one person who buries themself under such piles of work that there is a three day long queue to get to talk to her?"

"Our sister has always been like that, isn't it Amphi?" my brother Aidon muttered. "She rules Dracnesse with an iron hand. Efficient and detached but merciful. Heck, she rules it better than father."

"You should go talk to her," I nudged him. "I'm afraid I'll lose a hand or an eye if I try, and I have to go back home to Eric soon."

"Give her some time. She'll come around," Aidon sighed. "That's her way of expressing misery. Edwina pushes everyone away when she's angry or sad. She pushed father away after mother's death. She pushed me away after her Trials ended, didn't see her for one whole week. She pushed Tristan away because of whatever Apollo told her, but she won't admit it because of her ego."

"Admit what?"

He sighed, closing his eyes.

"She misses him. A lot. I know. She's almost stopped eating, and she doesn't sleep much. Went back to painting all night. The only time I see her talk is to her council or her people. She sees no one else."

"But... how do you know?" Vanessa asked.

"Trust me," Aidon said. "I know. After mother, I was closest to her. I know her since more than three hundred years. This is her way of holding grudges."

"What happened last night when she came back to Dracnesse? I heard her and Tristan shouting before she left," Llewellyn said reproachfully.

"Edwina almost burned down Dilston Castle when she slammed the doors open," Aidon grimaced. "You can't imagine how worried I was, how worried father was. Seeing his daughter come back from her new home less than a month after her wedding? And that too in the middle of the night?"

"I have no idea what happened between her and Apollo. You do the math, I have better things to do. Like talking to my sister and trying to convince her," Aidon grimaced. Then his eyes lit up. "Hey beautiful, want to get a drink?" he grinned at Vanessa, and she reddened, flustered.

"Oi!" Llewellyn hissed suddenly, "mind your business, Tremayne!" he possessively pulled her to him.

The poor boy. Why did Llewellyn keep on forgetting that he himself was engaged? To another woman? Llewellyn clearly cared a lot for Nessa, and she for him. It broke my heart to know that he was engaged to marry Favian's sister, Celestina Rotavelle instead.

"Shut up, Aidon," I chided my brother and pulled his ear. "As if you weren't the biggest flirt in town already."

"I am, and I will be," he proudly puffed out his chest and mussed his curls of red hair. He walked off muttering something and picking the iron spokes off the roof to twist them.

"What happened yesterday in Stormholt after Edwina left?" I worriedly asked Llewellyn.

"There was a terrifying storm the moment Tristan came back."

"Your brother is the reason storms are named after people," Vanessa told him.

"No, Nessa," Llewellyn said, dropping his voice. "My brother is the storm."

"What?"

"He was..." Llewellyn's face went dead white.

"Furious?" I asked helpfully, but he merely shook his head. His mouth opened, then closed again with a gulp.

"Tristan was... mad. You would not want to be with five hundred miles of him. He was this close to summoning his thunderbolt," Llewellyn held up his thumb and index finger nearly touching.

"He didn't!"

"They were fighting tooth to nail, Amphi! Both with weapons of Bloodstone. Tristan nearly killed him on the spot but mother fell at his feet and begged him to save Apollo. After all that vicious bastard did to her!" Llewellyn  spat. "Then my brother summoned us all to the yard. And when I saw Edwina missing, I knew something was up. But do you know what Tristan did?"

"What?" Vanessa asked.

"He took away Apollo's powers. All of them!"

"What?!" I cried. "Are you serious? Why on earth would he do that?"

"I have no idea," Llewellyn sighed. "I mean... it takes a monster to impose such a cruel punishment on a god! And Apollo - he looks like a walking corpse. His colour seems to have faded and he can't even walk two steps without groaning!"

"So that means?"

"Tristan won't give back father's powers until he apologizes for... whatever he did to Edwina. But Stormholt hasn't seen the sun for days. My brother has been in such a foul, terrible mood, he's not allowed the skies to lighten even a bit. It's dark as night in there," Llewellyn gulped, his grey eyes flickering nervously.

"Perhaps... it means that he's missing her?" Vanessa asked with a quizzical look.

All three of us sighed sadly.

"Can't you ask him? If he misses her?" I suggested, but Llewellyn quickly shook his head at once.

"You do not ask such things to Tristan when he is this furious. Literally. He will kill you right on the spot. And... there you go," he finished, as the Queen saw us, anger flashing in her eyes, and  we all scampered away at once.

Even though Edwina fought for freedom of slavery, she was the only person in Endollon who was not free.

The Queen was still a slave.

A slave to her emotions.

• • • • •

RIGHT. APOLLO IS DAMNED. JUST WAIT UNTIL THE PLOT THICKENS, SHIT REALLY GOES DOWN. Apologies for the short chapter too, but next week we're going to Vezort, so things are heated up immensely! Until next week, may the odds be ever in your favour!