Chapter 14 #3
Casimir remains still, seeming to absorb his words. Until his eyes ignite with a quiet rage, and he jerks back, shouting at the coachman. “Stop! Stop the carriage at once!”
The carriage jerks to a halt. Magaius’s expression grows wild. “Cas, whatever you are thinking right now, unthink it.”
But Casimir just stares at him a second longer before exiting the carriage.
He swivels his gaze left, then right. The streets are crowded with lowborns whose hands are all filled with expendable items they can launch at the passing carriage.
Upon seeing him, the shouts grow louder and more erratic. Casimir’s lips thin at the sight.
He splays his arms out, facing the crowd head on.
“What do you want from me?” he bellows. Thunder crackles behind gray clouds, and the sky cracks open, thick drops of rain pouring out.
“I have offered you all I can. I have bled for you. I have advocated for you. I am at war to protect a new system that benefits you.” His chest rises and falls as raindrops streak down his face, his black hair sticking to his skin.
“I have not only given you my resources, but my flesh and blood. What more can I give you to appease this restlessness? What weight do I need to shoulder?”
“Abdicate!” someone shouts from the back of the crowd.
Hissing murmurs of agreement sweep across lips. “Abdicate! Abdicate! Abdicate!” the crowd chants.
The first stone thrown hits him the hardest, knocking him on his cheekbone. Then comes rotten food, dirtying his clothes and staining his soul with a permanent mark which never managed to wash away.
Magaius sticks his head from the carriage. “Guards! Guards!” He points at the child who threw the first stone.
Guards charge forward and apprehend the boy who can be no more than twelve or thirteen. They shove him to his knees at Casimir’s feet, mud splashing up and splattering onto his face. “Your order, Prince,” one of the guards says, glancing between Casimir and the boy.
“Execute him!” Magaius hisses through clenched teeth, striding toward them. “He assaulted the Crowned Prince, gods-damn it.”
Simultaneously, the crowd erupts with a jarring mix of pleas for mercy and curses. A mother steps forward, her shrill voice piercing as her thrashing body is held back. “Please. Please,” she cries. “Spare my son. He does not understand. He only knows what he is told.”
“Weapons at the ready!” Magaius bellows.
The guards shift on their feet, looking back to Casimir, who remains silent, staring at the child with an entirely unreadable expression. Shouts echo and mingle, orders are given, yet all that can be heard is the sound of the rain pattering against cobblestone streets.
“Why did you throw that stone?” Casimir murmurs to the child.
The boy wrinkles his nose. “Because my Pa says you and your father have brought war, sir. He says your hunger for power has blinded you to the hungry. Says the Restorationists have offered their compromise—you and your father abdicate the throne—yet you do not accept and leave us to die like infected rats on the street.”
Casimir lowers himself to his knees, his drenched clothes clinging to him like a second skin. “Have any of my actions truly supported that claim?”
“What you’ve done doesn’t matter; it’s what you won’t do.”
Casimir winces at the words, his brows furrowing deeply. He slowly reaches his hand out, cupping the boy’s cheek and bringing his face closer to his. “I want nothing but the best for my people. For all of humanity. Everything I have done—all I continue to do—it is for the good of the people.”
“My little sister died yellow and a bag of bones. What’s good about that?” The boy’s upper lip curls, and he rears back, spitting in Casimir’s face. “Abdicate the throne! Down with the Vivaldri rule!”
“GUARDS!” Magaius snarls. “I gave you an order! Or does your Crowned Prince need to be assaulted yet again before you obey it?”
Two guards jerk Casimir back, shielding him with their bodies. One guard straightens the boy’s shoulders while another unsheathes his sword. Lightning breaks across the gray sky, and a loud crack of thunder booms. The rain falls harder, as if the sky has already decided to weep.
“Sword at the ready,” Magaius barks.
“NO!” The boy’s mother screams in horror. “No, I beg you! Let him go. Do not take my boy away from me. Please. I already lost my daughter. I can’t lose my boy, too. Please!”
“Restrain her!” Magaius orders.
Casimir pushes forward against his guards. “Stop this,” he says, his brows furrowed like he can’t make sense of what’s happening. “Stop this madness.”
A thunderclap rattles the ground at their feet, drowning out his voice. A guard turns his chin over his shoulder, glancing at him hurriedly. “Stay back, Highness. It isn’t safe.” Right on cue, an assault of flying rocks pelts the guards.
Casimir shakes his head. “Stop,” he tries again. “Let me through.”
Through gritted teeth and with a trail of blood streaking down from his temple, the guard says, “Sorry, Highness. But we have strict orders from the King to keep you protected at all costs. We cannot let you pass.”
“Just let me speak with them. Nobody needs to die. I cannot take anymore bloodshed. It was only spit for the gods’ sakes.” He looks past the guards’ shoulders, through the rain to where Magaius and the other guards hold the strings of a young mortal life in their hands. “Stop!” he shouts again.
But the sound of his voice is muffled by the roar of the angry crowd, the timbre chords of the storm, a sobbing mother, and Magaius’s booming instructions.
The next three words tumble simultaneously from different lips, each mouth only spewing one word. Yet the noises fuse together to form a single discordant sound.
“Release!”
“NO!”
“Stop!”
Lightning reflects off the shiny blade as it comes crashing down against skin.
The boy’s eyes remain open, the look of defiance giving way to shock frozen in his unmoving expression.
His head rolls across the muddied ground, halting only once it reaches Casimir’s feet.
He stares blankly at it, his eyes finally moving to trace the trail of blood already being swept away from the torrent of rain.
Casimir buckles, his weight seeming to cave in on itself.
The crowd erupts.
“Murderer!” they accuse. “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!”
They come together and attempt to push past the line of guards, flinging every item they hold hostage in their hands at Casimir. Though the guards shielding him try to stop it, rocks still pelt him from all sides, rotten food making a disgusting splat sound once it contacts his skin.
He doesn’t attempt to shield himself against a single thrown item.
“Protect the Prince!” Magaius instructs, covering his head and making for Casimir, wrapping his hand around his arm and yanking him back toward the carriage.
A man snarls and lunges for a guard. The guard reacts instantly, plunging his sword directly through the man’s chest. Crimson bubbles from his lips, and the guard jerks his sword free from the man’s body, stumbling back three steps.
The crowd grows angrier—hatred burning through all of them with a palpable intensity. Casimir shakes his head against what he sees, fighting against Magaius’s hold.
“Stop this! All of you—stop!” His voice goes nowhere, swallowed entirely by the sounds of conflict.
Yet no matter how hard Casimir tries to soothe the situation, it only gets worse. Until a full-scale bloody battle begins against the royal guards and the lowborns.
Magaius finally manages to wrangle Casimir back into the carriage, slamming the door closed behind them. A hollowness fills Casimir’s gaze that hadn’t been there previously. “This is all my fault,” he whispers, his eyes fixed to the floor. “I should have never left the carriage.”
Magaius says nothing.
Casimir’s lips thin, and he finally drags his eyes up to look at Magaius.
“Did the boy truly have to die? Is it really fair to kill a child who acts on nothing more than what they are told by their parents? We claim they are too young to care for themselves yet condone murdering them for actions they don’t even understand.
He….” Casimir pauses, emotion seeming to clog his throat.
He flexes his jaw against it. “He was a child, for fuck’s sake. ”
“The price of order and peace is blood,” Magaius mutters, pushing his sopping hair back and sprawling out across his seat, tipping his head against the carriage wall. “It is and will always be blood. The only question that ever exists is whose blood it’ll be.”
I am ripped from the seams of smoke and mist, immediately plunged into a new sea of fog.
Casimir strides through a brazier-lit corridor, his hollow eyes matching the emptiness in his expression.
He clutches a limp body in his arms. She is dressed in a beautiful sparkling gown that compliments the ashen color of her hair.
I imagine that if her eyes were open, the blue undertone of the fabric would accentuate the hue of her irises.
I notice that Casimir himself is dressed decadently, making him look exceptionally handsome with his drawn-back hair and piercing amber eyes.
He walks on, the noise of his shoes clacking against the floor the only sound. Until Magaius comes sprinting from the other end of the corridor.
“I came…as soon…as I heard,” he says through winded breaths.
Casimir ignores him entirely, continuing to walk forward mindlessly—numbly.
“Cas,” Magaius whispers, skipping a few steps to stay next to him. “Cas, is she….” He flicks his pained eyes down to Sitara, who remains unconscious and limp in Casimir’s arms. “Did he do this to her?”
Casimir still does not answer him.
“Where are you taking her?” Magaius questions, the panic beginning to settle in his tone. “The healer’s quarters are in the opposite direction.”
Wordlessly, Casimir continues forward, as lifeless as the unconscious girl hanging limp in his arms.
“CAS!” Magaius shouts.