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February 17 - February 19, 2024
What most historians routinely fail to understand or, for that matter, convey, is that Queen Elma I of Rothen was neither hero, nor traitor, nor figure of legend. She was simply a woman.
One day you’ll outright laugh at something I say and hate yourself for it.” His eyes shone. “I can’t wait.”
Hatred, helplessness, and an insidious lust warred for dominance in her chest. And somewhere in the recesses of her mind, Elma felt vividly alive.
I want to be alone, she thought. She wanted to be alone in the vast tundra, a speck of color against a white-grey expanse. Nobody, forgotten, a lost soul in the frozen nothing.
Because she yearned to kill this man, but with every passing day, he embedded deeper within her like a thorn. She could not extract him.
For a moment they were frozen in time, gazing at one another in mirrored wonder, as if discovering each other at long last. And then they collided.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Say anything about what? How good you taste? The sound you make when you come? How much I want to kill whoever’s outside your door and lay you out on the bed just so I can hear that sound again?” He smiled serenely. “I won’t say a word.”
“For god’s sake,” Elma spat, scrambling to her feet in annoyance. “I hate you.” “As you should.” Rune moved toward her, and the air between them seemed to electrify. “But strangely, I don’t hate you. Isn’t that interesting?”
Rothen stands on the foundations that your father and his ancestors created, blood-soaked as they are. But you…” Rune looked at Elma as if she were the only thing that existed in that moment. “You could be loved, Elma Volta. You could grow a garden.”
if she could live up to the hope that shone in his eyes, perhaps she would be a worthy queen after all.
“If that’s what my bloodthirsty queen so desires.” She glanced at Rune sidelong. “I am anything but yours.” He grinned, but something tugged on the corners of it, weighing it down. “If it makes you feel any better, Majesty, I am nothing if not yours.”
Then he kissed her, pulling her into a tight embrace, and his mouth felt like longing, his hands like forgiveness. “I have wanted you,” he murmured, lifting her up and carrying her into the bedroom, “since the moment I first heard your voice. I have dreamt every night of tasting you, of hearing my name on your lips.”
His face was spattered with blood, his hair plastered to his sweaty brow, and in his gaze was the fierce flame of something that could have been love.
He was almost too beautiful then, like a painting rather than a man, a princely figure wreathed in night-dark raiments, his blue eyes shining as he stood half-turned to face her, expectation and affection lingering in his impossible gaze.
But I wanted so badly to be her or to love her. I don’t know which. Both, perhaps. But I can tell you that my idea of this perfect queen, the projection of a woman who didn’t exist… she reminds me painfully of you.”
prayed to the stars or whoever might be listening. Let me die quickly. Let me go home soon.
