11 Worsening Relations #2
Astrid contemptuously waved the suggestion away. “Various suitors, none suitable. Besides, they’d only be my spouse. I never found anyone worth calling my consort.”
Astrid reached out a hand to gently rest it on my leg. Reflexively, I jerked away from her touch. She withdrew her hand, her expression twisting in confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“You abandoned me,” I flatly said.
Astrid’s furrowed brows smoothed as she smiled, relaxing. “I thought I told you. I was told you were dead.”
I shook my head. “Not during the war. Before. After school. You left me.”
Astrid jerked back, blinking rapidly. “Levar, had I not left when my father called, his minions would have killed you.”
“I know that, but you promised to return. You said no matter what, you would return to me. Instead, you disappeared to the Empire. Apparently, you married whatever demon lord your father had lined up for you, then made your bid for the throne and abandoned me.”
“That is unfair. I was kept from you by circumstances beyond my control.”
“The effect was the same.”
“What did you expect me to do?” Astrid asked.
“You could have written,” I replied. “I didn’t even know you were alive. Your father’s goons took you away, then there was the coup, then nothing. Just muddled reports from Military Intelligence that many Imperial nobles were dead.”
“What could I have said? You knew me as an innocent baron’s daughter. Now I was Emperor, patricide, regicide. How could I possibly explain the new me?”
“I would have understood if you’d bothered to try explaining it to me. Did you think I would not come to you had you called?”
“You made it perfectly clear no Commonwealth woman would accept me as your consort.”
“I wasn’t asking you to be my consort. I was asking you to be my wife!”
Astrid leveled a condescending frown at me. “You’re far too smart to imagine the Emperor could marry a foreign commoner.”
Her words stole the wind from my gut. It was all I could do to hold back the tears which threatened to pour from my eyes. Instead, I turned half away from her and kneaded my forehead to covertly wipe my eyes dry. The moment I could do so without openly weeping, I faced her again.
“No. I guess that was just another schoolboy fantasy.”
Astrid stood, taking the high ground against me. “Must you focus on what’s past? Can we not appreciate being where we are now?”
“Do you think it’s that easy for me to turn back the clock and return to who I was in the Academy? I spent the last ten years at war.”
“As did I,” Astrid replied.
An old, familiar hatred flared within me – the civilians who claimed that they were fighting the same war I was while sitting safely light-years behind the star front, that their rationing of strategic materials meant they suffered just as much as me and my comrades.
“You didn’t fight.” I was standing – when had that happened? The rage had me, and I threw my words at the Emperor. “You sat on your throne, parsecs from the battlefield, sending legions to kill my countrymen, my friends. Your friends. At least they were your friends before you left.”
Astrid’s eyes were wide, her face pale. “I didn’t know—”
“Didn’t know what?” I interrupted. “That they’d be in danger? That I’d be? We studied together at a military academy. We were training to be officers. How could we not be imperiled by a war between our two nations?”
Astrid straightened, her Emperor’s mask sliding into place. “Being Emperor has considerations you know nothing about.”
“Considerations that don’t include friends, it seems. Or me.”
Astrid reached down and took my hands in hers. “Levar, I’m telling you I still love you, despite all that’s happened.”
I gently slid my hands from her grasp to raise hers towards my face, then pushed them away.
“After all that’s happened, you expect me to believe that?
After everyone you’ve killed? Your family, I understand, in an Imperial sort of way.
You didn’t plan the coup, just exploited it.
But you started this war against us. You chose to send your armies to kill us.
We were your friends, Astrid. I was your lover.
Yet you threw our lives away in favor of your Imperial ambitions.
You can’t have truly loved me if you never imagined I might die in the war you started.
How could I imagine you can possibly love anyone? ”
Astrid started as if electrified, and her face took on a hideous snarl. “Get out,” she said. She stood quivering, vibrating with restrained actions. I wondered if she wanted to hit me. When I tarried too long, she screamed, “Get the Fall away from me!”
“Come, sir. Let’s return to your chambers.
” Wiktor had appeared at my side, grabbing my elbow.
I allowed him to pull me away without a word, but I looked back at Astrid as long as I could.
She glared at me so hatefully I wondered if she would shed her gloves and attack me, but she remained tense and violently angry until I passed out of sight.
Then I heard a hideous crack and the sound of water pouring from a pond.
I didn’t want to take pleasure in hurting Astrid, but it felt good knowing I could wound her just as much as she had wounded me.