Chapter 13 #3
“I think all the time you spend alone is making you crack,” she said, giving me a look of mocking pity, still moving around me as I continued to turn and keep her in my line of sight.
Despite the knife being in my hand, it was she who felt like the hunter now, stalking around me like a lioness about to go in for the kill.
But I wasn’t her prey, she was underestimating me as usual, and I’d exploit that weakness the second I got the chance.
“Poor little Austyn,” she said in an overexaggerated tone.
“Stuck in her tower for days on end, making up fairy tales in her head to keep her company. It really is quite tragic. You should be grateful the pageant is coming, that Kahn will soon wed you and make use of you while you’re still young and relatively pretty. ”
“He will never touch me,” I spat and she grinned at that.
“He will do whatever he pleases with you after you are married. You will belong to him and soon learn to accept your position as his property. And you will provide him with sons, Austyn, even if I have to strap you down to a table to ensure he has access to that royal heir-maker between your thighs.”
“Fuck you,” I snarled, taking a step towards her with intent and raising my knife.
“Metal Affinity or not, you could not strike me with that blade,” Magdor said with a taunting smile. “Go ahead, try it.”
I lunged at her, slashing the knife towards her vile face, but she moved like the wind, evading the blow and somehow appearing behind me.
She laughed in my ear and I swung around, slashing at her again with perfect skill, the air seeming to ring with every strike I made, but she seemed to shift aside faster than should have been possible.
Her laughter hung everywhere, lilting and mocking, and a shriek of rage left me as I fought harder, faster, trying to catch this monster who had inserted herself into our lives.
This had to be magic, a wicked, monstrous brand of it that this horrid woman embodied.
I was shocked by laying witness to it, but it equally spurred me into action, my desire to see her wiped from this world driving out all fear in me.
My breaths came heavier as she continued to avoid every one of my attacks and I changed the direction of my next blow, swiping the blade to my left into thin air, predicting her movements.
Magdor cried out and sweet satisfaction poured through my chest as the blade sliced open her forearm, but as I lifted it towards her throat with my teeth bared and adrenaline warring in my blood, she used her next move to catch my wrist and her taloned nails drove straight into my flesh.
I gasped as a rush of power ran into my veins, an overwhelming feeling of darkness skimming along the inside of my flesh.
“Fool,” she snarled, her eyes turning to pitch and seeming full of something otherworldly, like I was gazing into the pits of death itself.
She was frighteningly strong as she tugged my hand back and forced me to hold the dagger to my own heart instead. Fear reached into my chest with icy fingers, enslaving me as this power in her took root in my bones and held me in its grasp.
“Gosh, what a pity it would be if the princess were to skewer herself on her father's blade,” Magdor mused.
“What are you?” I gasped in horror, my hand trembling around the knife.
She moved unnaturally fast and her strength was like a gift from the gods, but I had never heard her boast of such a talent. Was this some rare Affinity, some potion she’d drunk to enhance herself, or was it something far worse that I couldn’t even comprehend?
“I am your empress,” she growled, her voice deep and so unlike her own for a moment that it seemed as if a demon were speaking for her. “You will behave, I am weary of your defiance. Your father is tired of it too. Don’t you see how you drain him?”
A lump grew in my throat at those words, the cruel accusation of them. That I was his burden.
“It's not me, it's you,” I pushed. “I know what you're doing.”
“And what is that?” she demanded. “Being a devoted wife? Helping your father through his illness?”
“What illness?” I breathed, deathly quiet, my whole world suddenly hanging in the balance.
“He is in the clutches of death, my dear,” Magdor said harshly and a breath snagged in my lungs, refusing to come out.
“A cancerous disease is burrowing into his bones.
But I've been hunting The Twelve Kingdoms for a Prophet of the Fallen who will be able to save him. Shall I stop my quest? Is that what you want? Are you so against the magic of old that you would discard its uses even when it can heal your own father?”
Terror slithered through my chest at the threat in her words. “You know I don't want that.”
Father was all I had left of my family. And maybe the body that housed him was tainted by Magdor, but his old self had to still be in there.
There had to be a chance he could still come back to me.
If he was sick, I had to protect him. But who was to say if Magdor was lying or not?
What if she had placed that sickness in him herself?
Though she would have no reason to do so – it would only hurt her if he died.
She would lose her position upon his death.
Even as a woman who could not rule alone, I was the heir to the throne of Osaria.
My husband would be the next rightful emperor and she would be nothing.
“Good, so you will do as he wishes and not upset him in his time of need. You will attend the pageant. You will look your best. You will be Unveiled, and your suitors will drool at your feet. Then you will marry the victor. And the victor will be my son.”
My nose wrinkled at her words, at the trap I felt forming around myself.
She would lose her position if I married anyone other than Kahn, but if it was, he who I ended up shackled to then I was certain I’d never be rid of her.
No doubt that was why she was trying to ensure this course of fate.
Perhaps I was a rabbit in a hunter's snare, not a bird in a cage.
It was worse than being caught, I was going to be devoured.
This woman would sink her teeth into me.
She'd take every drop of light I had left and chew it up. Eat, eat, eat.
“I will fight this every step of the way,” I declared.
“Austyn, I grow tired of your complaints.
I gave you everything you ever could have asked for.
Kahn is as beautiful as you now. But it wasn't enough.
You refused him even then. But when the pageant begins, do you know what you'll see?” She moved closer to me, tugging the blade from my hand and wrapping a lock of my silver hair around her finger in a possessive grip.
“What?” I breathed, fiercely afraid of her in that moment.
“That there is nothing better waiting for you beyond these walls. No other man will be finer. None of them will catch your eye or steal your heart. I have seen all of the suitors and Kahn is the best there is. I want you to realise that you won't be missing a thing. I want you to choose Kahn.”
“Why?” I demanded. “What difference does it make to you?”
Her icy expression broke into a bright smile.
“I’m not a monster,” she said with a bright laugh, and I grimaced at this woman who had just moments ago promised to tie me to a table so her son could rape me.
“I simply want you to realise that no man will offer you more than Kahn anyway. I want you both to be happy. So have your pageant,” she said, waving a hand as if it was me who had decided on the pageant in the first place.
I realised what this was really about. She wanted me willing, she didn’t want to go to the effort of forcing me along this road she was determined for me to remain on.
But she was underestimating my stubbornness even after she had witnessed it all these years, because I would never submit to her repugnant offspring.
Ice coated my next words. “But if I go through with it and Kahn wins, you'll force us to marry even if it makes me eternally miserable.”
She released my hair, stepping back as her gaze scraped down me from head to toe. “Yes.” She floated away from me. “Women don't get to choose, my dear. It's the way of the world. Even if you were a commoner, do you think you would have a chance to marry for love ?” she half-choked on the word.
I stiffened, my hands curling into tight fists. “I don’t want a man, Magdor. Love or not, I don’t want to marry someone because I am forced to. I don’t want him taking the power of my kingdom from me when I am the only true heir to it.”
Her beautiful features softened and light grew in her eyes. “You're a princess, that's what princesses must do. You have a responsibility to birth an heir. And that heir will be my son’s.”