Victory's Price

Phoenix - Wolf (Part Fifty - Four)

Chapter 54

"You may stay there as long as you like, I cannot change my mind."

Phoenix closed her eyes and did not move. If she looked at him now she would break; her body would break, her soul would break and the rules would break. The rules that could never break.

She heard a chair scrape across the wooden floorboards. It stopped before her and her king sat down. She could feel his gaze as he treated her to his unabashed scrutiny.

"So you are the Phoenix." He said finally. It was not the most dramatic sentence but she sensed it conveyed all that he thought.

She kept her silence, allowing him to muse.

"You have been the foremost object of Toran's desire for pretty much the entirety of his life's span..."

"Toran is dead." She corrected. "The player who has just left goes by the name of Wolf."

The king sighed.

"Well my brother, Wolf or Toran, whichever, will not be gone for long."

"He will not return."

Her king laughed and she heard the chair creak as he leant back.

"My brother, Wolf if you must, will realise he has left you behind. He is not capable of forgetting his dreams."

Phoenix lifted her head, smiling knowingly.

"I am no longer an object of his longing." She declared. "Let me ask you, your Majesty, what are the Stars?"

"It does not matter what substance they hold." He growled. "The Stars are an entity of evil."

The history of every man's violence was written in his eyes. This king's gaze told her all she needed to know.

Her Victory had not treated him kindly. The Stars would love this pain. He was not inherently cruel or hash, she could see it, but he was slowly coming to realise the price of his position and he was resolved to the fact that he must do what needed to be done. This was his final barrier. He would not sacrifice the last of his humanity to the Stars.

She would have to break him.

"He will not return." She repeated, and stood. "Do you know what it means to be accepted?"

The king snorted.

"Naturally." He said, tilting his head so that he could remain sitting and still speak to her face. He found her stature in no way intimidating and he remained in his easy slouch. Handsome and charismatic; he was, she concluded, built for a throne.

"My brother, Wolf now, was determined to share his research with the world."

He was not, she realised, capable of uttering the word 'Wolf' without allocating it the prefix 'brother.' There was an irony in the fact that neither sibling could accept the fate of the other. It was quaint but it was going to get Wolf, strong, promising... necessary Wolf, killed.

She yawned, feigning disinterest.

"And so you understand, now, my meaning. Your brother will not return because by this time tomorrow he will be dead." She rested a light palm on Victory's pommel and the sword gave her the information she needed. "It is sin enough, my King, to kill a friend. Can your soul take the death of a sibling also?"

His jaw fell slack at her words and his eyes glazed. For a second she feared that he would fall. But then the resolve was back, made stronger by his guilt. Only a king could afford to be so sure in his beliefs.