FEATURED BY @Retold
A fight for a kingdom that belongs to neither.
Aneira Guinevere was the fairest in the land - with her flowing dark tresses reminiscent of the midnight sky, and her delicate skin as pure as snow. Though the weight of her past l...
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Three days had been enough time for the news of the coup to reach the ears of Emperor Aaryan Perygwyn. He wasn't happy about it.
In fact, he was thoroughly incensed. The mere thought of his troops being overpowered by slaves who were mere skin and bones made his temper rise higher than ever.
His troops had never been overpowered.
Though the slaves had numbers on them, they were weak. The halfling alone could have taken them on, but she had let the soldiers have fun because they rarely had the chance to injure or impale their captives. All the captives had been overwhelmed and were locked away. Again.
What did annoy Emperor Aaryan Perygwyn was the fact that they lost a little girl to the dark forest. He didn't care that she wouldn't have made it through the night or that her wounds were septic. He didn't care that she was just a vulnerable and frail little girl. He would have been just as annoyed if it had been an older man.
To him, it was just money and image.
He hated the fact that the girl could have fetched him a few thousand Black Pennies if it had been negotiated right. He also detested the fact that she had overcome his defenses and run.
As far as he was concerned, she was dead. But how had fatuous men such as their captives managed to free one? He didn't know.
The emperor demanded answers, and whenever he demanded anything, people around him trembled. The walls trembled, and even the air seemed to thicken as the sound of his voice traveled through. The king had refused to travel down to the slave castle to witness and punish all who acted in the coup, claiming to be "embarrassed" at the fact that they had it in them to resist his forces.
The dark gray castle walls around him highlighted his silvering strands of hair that adorned his pale face, which was tussling between disbelief and high dudgeon. His queen's face seemed to exist among the few other fearful ministers as the emperor tried to decide whether to laugh at the incompetence of his cavalry or let them face castigation. He looked at his already eleven-year-old son, Benedict, who stood next to his wife Miscilla and his younger son.
The Halfling, Cimera, knelt before him on the aisle, faced down in shame. She had been summoned moments after the raven had been sent out to the king, making him aware of the damage. Cimera had hoped to keep it under the covers, but Everest had other plans.
Aaryan's gruff voice broke the silence, as he spoke to his son. "Tell me, Ben," he began, looking at him, and then at his halfling. "I can't seem to make up my mind! What must I do to this cumberworld?"
