My Beloved Queen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

xviii. the wedding

queen
// heavy is a crown fashioned out of necessity. weak is a crown tempered by fear and loathing. the metals chip at the slightest blow; the crown bends from too tight a hold.

————

Thick. The air inside the carriage was thick and heavy: a fog that only curdled with time, and around your throat, you felt it settle, sticky and hot, like candle wax. Its taste was bitter and uncomfortable, but when you tried to swallow it, it stuck to the back of your throat. Clung there like a burr—a piece of metal, rusty and jagged.

Didi was gone, now. You'd ushered her away—helped her flee into the arms of a man she swore she loved.

Didi will be fine.

And now you were alone.

This is right—it must be.

So, so alone.

You parted your lips and tried to fill your lungs with air, but all that entered your mouth was candle wax, hot and thick. It pooled in your chest and stuck to your skin, and when it cooled the shape it took was strange and hard. It was a pointed thing, an unkind thing, and when you exhaled, its sharp edges rubbed uncomfortably up against the walls of your lungs, but you could hold your breath for only so long.

You inhaled and turned your face outward, to the sky and the strange lake that stretched beneath it. In the foreign waters swam the sky's reflection: blue and white—colors too soft and peaceful for so unfamiliar a land. Yet here they sat, unwelcome and unsuited, filling a world to which they did not belong. Perhaps they had been stolen away from their home. Perhaps some thief or robber had taken them hostage, and here now they lay, bound and gagged, aching for some means with which to return to their place of belonging—wishing for some person to take pity upon them, to aid them in their greatest time of need.

And yet no relief had come.

The metal in the back of your mouth dug suddenly into the back of your tongue, and you curled your fingers until your nails pressed sharply into the flesh of your palms—until you could force another breath past your lips. The strange shape sitting in your lungs shifted, and as your breath left your lips, one of its pointed ends sunk firmly into the flesh of your lungs.

The pain was hot, like a burning ember pressed suddenly to your skin, and a shriek, high and sharp, started in your breast and tumbled into your mouth, but you snapped your jaw shut before it could flee past your lips. You felt it press at your teeth, shoving at them, desperate to be free—to call out to someone, anyone. But you screwed your eyes shut and ground your teeth until your jaw ached, and the shriek sputtered into a pitiful, high-pitched whine.

The emptiness was quick to swallow the sound, to devour a noise so pathetic and weak, and the whine died before its trembling fingers could ever hope to graze the ears of friend or servant. Yet the pitiful sound made for a terrible meal; it had been a taste, nothing more, and the emptiness did not settle back into its seat upon finishing its treat. You felt it shift around you, restless and hungry; you could hear the low growl of its stomach, how it demanded more.

It brushed up against you as it paced, its movements unburdened by the thick air, and its skin was smooth—smooth and slimy. If you opened your eyes you might spy it. Your gaze might meet its own, and you would see the wicked shape of its stare—the greed that sharpened its pupils. Avarice alone, for its sole purpose was to want, to seek and devour. Like death, like decay; the wolves of Aeriz, prowling in the shadows, feasting upon the carcasses of beasts long dead.