The Songbird and the Wolf

[ XXV ] The Lesser Evil

The world is silent but for the hammer of her own heart. 

Even the wind outside seems to stop howling, the world crawling to a stop with the gravity of her words.

All she knows is the burn of their stares, piercing through her until it scorches the walls behind her. She meets the gazes, does not buckle beneath them and waits. 

Waits for them to grasp exactly what it is she is proposing. 

Then the silence is broken by a burst of explosive latter, from the Queen at first, then the sound ripples. Ripples until it is a tidal wave that threatens to drown her. 

It dies down when the King speaks, the amusement a barbed, brutal thing meant to humiliate and carve at her. "I am so sorry to break it to you, sweet Princess," his words are the rumbling growl of thunder. "But I am quite happily married." 

Bile burns the back of her throat, and she swallows past it. Hoping the moment of revulsion didn't flicker even for a heartbeat across her features. 

She stiffens her posture, shaking off the lingering disgust, and comments coolly. 

"As...remarkable a union that would be, you misunderstand me, your Highness." Her voice does not lift above soft tone, despite the sarcastic venom that tries its best to penetrate her words, she holds it back with every ounce of willpower she possesses.

Now her gaze drifts from the King, to the Prince. 

The Prince who seems to have caught on to her meaning quicker than anyone else in the throne room. 

"When I was a child," before any of this happened, "My parents began arrangements for my eventual marriage." 

She had plead with them not to, begged them to in the very least let her choose a partner when she was ready for it. 

Elodie had never been quite certain whether it had been out of the kindness of their hearts, or the fact... other things came up that she hadn't ended up being married off. 

Truly, her brothers and sisters subject to the same fate had ended up happy enough. 

But the idea had set a terror in her heart she remembered even to this day.

Never in a million years would she have pictured herself here, begging to sell herself away.

The breath catches in her lungs now, as she shifts her gaze from the King to his son. 

The son who is watching her. His stare shifting seamlessly from studious but distant, to alert and unwavering. He makes no pretence of this any more, and as he watches her. She swallows, wetting her lips and continuing. 

"Preparations to marry the Princess of Court Aquila to the Prince of Court Corvus," an agreement nearly half a century old. 

One she had thanked the Gods the day it finally seemed buried. 

"And I think it would be beneficial for both our courts if we seek to complete that agreement."

Romantic was far from the word for it, this was calculated and cruel, and the very opposite of any hope she had ever had for her eventual marriage. 

But for the sake of her Court, there wasn't a piece of her she wouldn't hesitate to give away.

The laughing tone of the Court has been silenced only in the space of a heartbeat, the air ice cold and claustrophobic. 

"And shackle our beloved son to a dying Court?" Theodosia's laugh dies on the icy air, freezes on it. 

"You overestimate your value, Princess," if the world is frozen, the fire in King Arzian's tone is enough to thaw and scorch it.