Chapter 2 #4
Magdor chuckled lightly like we didn’t despise each other, but the coldness in her eyes warned me to back down. A warning I didn’t plan on heeding.
“I’d rather stay here for this delightful family meeting,” she replied.
You will never be family to me.
“Daughter,” Father sighed, reaching out and cupping my face, a hint of light in his eyes that I swear I hadn’t seen in him for years. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” I said, emotion burning in my throat.
I missed him when we were parted and I missed him when we were close.
Sometimes I sat at his left hand during formal dinners before the entire court and missed him so much I could scarcely draw breath.
The man I’d known and loved before his foul empress had forced her way into our lives was not the man I saw before me day after day, and sometimes I feared that he would never be that man for me again.
A shadow shifted beneath the door they’d entered through and I frowned, wondering if my maids had come, but my attention switched back to my father as he took my hand and led me to a golden table by the window, pulling out a seat for me.
I dropped onto it, watching him closely as Magdor lurked nearby like a crow looking for some eyes to peck out and I forcibly ignored her as Father sat opposite me.
“How are you, Austyn?” he asked, and I couldn’t even remember the last time he’d asked me that.
It made my heart beat powerfully and a thousand memories of my childhood rise in my mind.
We’d been so close once, utterly inseparable.
I’d sat beside his throne while he’d spoken with the people of our empire and I had learned every single thing I could about ruling with honour and courage at his side.
But that was when it had been just the two of us.
Before I’d been forced aside and put in my place as a girl with one purpose.
“I’m…” I was about to offer a lie when I realised I shouldn’t have to. Maybe Father would listen to my concerns about the pageant, about Kahn. “Not good, actually.”
“Oh?” He frowned, reaching out to squeeze my hand as Magdor moved to stand behind him and I had to acknowledge her presence.
“She’s being dramatic again, my love,” Magdor said softly, her hand slipping onto his shoulder, fingernails painted like red talons gripping him tightly and making my spine straighten.
“Is it dramatic to not want to be sold like a cow at a market, Magdor?” I sniped at her as she shifted the hand on Father’s shoulder, raising her chin at me.
“Goodness, you are spoiled,” she sighed. “Isn’t she, Tarim?”
I looked to Father and his expression seemed suddenly distant again, his eyes becoming almost vacant. “Spoiled…yes, indeed. I believe you’re right, Magdor, my love.”
“What?” I gasped, staring at him in horror as he sided with that bitch, withdrawing his hand from mine and leaving me aching for the once familiar warmth of his touch again.
“I know I’m privileged to live in a palace and never know the taste of hunger, or any of the hardships of the lesser Fae, but don’t I have a right to have a say in my own fate? ”
“Your fate is one most women in the kingdom would give up everything for,” Magdor said in exasperation, like she was talking to a tiresome child. “Isn’t that right, darling?”
“Yes…that’s right,” Father agreed and hurt flashed through me.
The door creaked and my eyes whipped towards it, my heart lurching as my gaze locked on the handsome, chiselled face of my father’s personal guard.
He was tall with deep brown skin and the thick muscles all the guards held, his hair earthy brown and cropped short all over.
The aura he commanded made my lungs feel heavy in my chest. Usually, the guards worked to be invisible, to blend away into the walls and move as little as possible, but I had always found this man harder to ignore than the rest.
The hollows of his cheeks flexed as his jaw tightened and his throat worked as everything about him tensed.
But his eyes were what captivated me most; they were like two lakes of caramel, and they widened as they fell on me, taking in every inch of my exposed face and leaving me feeling more naked than I ever had in my entire life.
It was exhilarating, the rush, the feel of the forbidden racing through me as I became trapped in an eternal moment where I felt seen for once, truly seen . I knew this man well, his presence a constant in the palace and a blush rose in my cheeks under his intense scrutiny.
Cassius Lazar was older than me, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, and though he was paid to guard the royals, I always got the feeling it was something innate in him, a protectiveness about him that made me feel safe in his presence.
There was a strain to his expression, as if his whole point of existence had hinged on walking through that door, but why?
My shock at his appearance suddenly gave way to the reality of his crime, and it came crashing in on me all too heavily.
He had seen my face. He had committed the unspeakable when it came to me.
And yet he didn’t move or run, he simply stared at me like he wanted to get hold of me, a sudden wildness to him that spoke of some urgent fear I couldn’t comprehend.
I shook my head in a frantic urge for him to leave, knowing the terrible consequences of this if he was spotted. A breath remained solidly trapped inside my chest as I immediately snapped my attention back to Father and Magdor before I gave him away.
For a second, I thought I had acted fast enough, but then that bitch of an empress turned her head, and even as I leapt out of my seat to try and drag her attention back to me with my pulse drumming out a violent tune in my ears, I already knew it was too late.
“Insolence!” she roared as she spotted him. “You have laid your eyes on the sacred face of the princess!”
“Wait,” I gasped in terror as Cassius continued to stare at me, seemingly rooted in place, and I could have sworn he was looking right through my flesh directly at my soul.
“Guards!” Magdor bellowed and the pounding of footsteps came from beyond the door. “Seize him!”
Cassius jolted out of his stupor and looked to Magdor, a sneer curling his lips and his hand suddenly went to his sword.
But before he could draw it, he was dragged out of view by several pairs of hands, the guards outside making sure that they didn’t so much as peek through the door for fear of laying their eyes on me and facing the same fate.
I stood up with my mind buzzing and fear consuming me, looking to Father in outrage. “He can’t be punished for something so trivial, call them off this second!”
“He will face the punishment of his crime,” Magdor spat, a twisted gleam in her eyes as she strode towards the door as if she intended to ensure it herself.
“ Father ,” I begged of him in desperation, but his face was stern now, no hint of warmth in his eyes.
“It is the law,” he growled. “No man may lay his eyes on you before you come of age. Everyone in the kingdom understands the punishment for such a crime and he will suffer it as the law commands.”
“But it is not long before I am to be Unveiled,” I gasped, shaking my head furiously. “Cassius Lazar has served you for many years, he is your most trusted guard.”
“And he has broken the law,” Father muttered dismissively, like that man was nothing. Like he meant as little to him as a fly on the wall. But the guards were men with lives beyond this heartless palace, and I wouldn’t see one of them executed for something so meaningless.
I gave up on trying to convince Father and ran after Magdor instead, my heart rioting against my ribs as I grabbed my veil, throwing it over my head as I chased her out into the corridor.
Cassius was on his knees, his hands being cuffed in iron manacles behind his back and he didn’t resist his arrest all, his head hanging in shame at what he’d done.
But why had he done it? Had it really been worth his life just to gaze upon my face?
He would have known the consequences of such a thing.
What in Osaria had possessed him to be so foolish?
“Why?” I demanded of him, but he didn’t look up, didn’t say a single word, just stared at the pale wood of the floor beneath his knees, his broad frame trembling with some barely concealed emotion.
I wasn’t sure if it was rage at himself for what he’d done or something fiercer, but the taste of it coloured the air and made me shiver from the force of whatever Affinities he claimed.
This man held a secret, one I couldn’t read from him at all, and it looked like he was going to die with it.
“Magdor, he can’t be killed for this. It’s a mistake. Tell her it was a mistake,” I begged of Cassius, moving to grasp her arm but she just shrugged me off like I was nothing but a bothersome wasp.
“There was no mistake, Your Highness. I sincerely apologise,” Cassius said, his voice low and deep, his brow deeply furrowed as he accepted this fate.
“You have breached the law and will face torture and death without trial,” Magdor announced cuttingly.
“No,” I snarled, grabbing her arm, my nails digging into her flesh as I forced her to look at me. “It’s just a face. It means nothing.”
“Laws are laws, Princess Austyn. As you reminded me so succinctly just earlier today,” Magdor hissed, wrenching her arm free of my grip. “Now return to your room and stop this hysteria.”
She snapped her fingers at the guards surrounding Cassius and they hauled him to his feet, guiding him away down the corridor, leaving me with guilt burning a hole in my chest and tears searing my eyes.
The worst part of it all was that I was going to be Unveiled at the beginning of the pageant anyway. So Cassius’s life had been wasted mere days before the whole kingdom would be allowed to see my face regardless.
I took a breath, feeling like my voice may as well have been cut out of my throat and discarded, because no one in this palace listened to me.
There was nothing I could do now that the empress had given her orders, and my chest crushed with emotion over how completely helpless I felt in the face of Cassius’s death.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed a pointless apology to the single man in the world who had seen my face beyond my father and would suffer a terrible fate because of it.
As a tear rolled down my cheek, soaking into the netting of my veil, I felt the walls around me close in a little tighter, the light growing a little dimmer.
A part of me wished I could follow Cassius into death, because it looked like there was never going to be another way out of this insufferable life.
Maybe there was something better waiting in the cold clutches of the afterlife. Maybe there, I could be free.