Phantom Ddraig: The Blood Of Kings

Chapter 25: Queen Ishtar

A long time ago Ishtar had sworn to never let alcohol touch her lips, infact the very thought of ever drowning herself in the spirits was something that would have made her skin crawl. She had seen what it had done to her father during the troubles with her "mother's" other aspect.

And yet here she was in her bed room with four empty bottles of Esvaden whiskey laying around her bed with one more clasped in her right hand. Her throat burned from that brown substance that she downed and yet it still couldn't warm the cold pit in her body and mind.

" Yet another thing for the younger me to hate me over," she muttered with a hollow chuckle.

She had to hold back the bitter bile within her from escaping upwards as the bitter liquid almost made her sick with how it churned her stomach. Frankly she had been forcing the liqueur down her throat and into her unwelcoming stomach even though it tasted absolutely horrible.

"Why do people drink this junk and why am I still drinking it?" She cursed as before downing another swig of the whiskey.

She had always thought that beer, wine or whiskey would have a sweet taste to it, not a bitter and sour taste so bad that she imagined this was the stuff Silver Hawk used to make prisoners squal their secrets.

She looked at the nearest mirror which showed a young woman with an unruly mess of blue hair and crowsfeet underneath her eyes. It was a pitiful sight to behold and she wanted to grab one of the empty bottles around her bed and smash it into a million pieces.

But she did not carry out this desire, no matter how strongly it burned in her heart. She merely sat, transfixed by the image of absolute patheticness that sat in parallel of her. She wondered how the people would be disgusted at this worthless drunk that paraded itself in the place of their queen.

"Look what you have become, all mighty Queen of Avalon," she bitterly whispered as she fought back the desire to let her eyes leak salty tears.

"If only father could see me now." she whispered again after a gulp of the bitter liquid. "The realm is at war and all you do is hide in the bottle, I thought that I had raised you much better than this!"

She spoke out in a terrible impression of her father's disappointment. The pantomime warmed her up in a good way and after such a long time, Ishtar could finally smile.

Her musing was shattered when her door was swung wide open with such force that the wooden construct would have been thrown off its hinges.

Ishtar tried to jump for her bow which lay open her bedstand. Unfortunately for the oldest child of the Ddraig line, the amounts of beers and wines that she downed for the last two hours took their affects and she was thus slower and sluggish than she should normally be.

She knew that if this was a potential attacker, then she was already dead. The palace... nay, the entire damn city was under lockdown with hundreds of thousands of Knights and Asikari crawling about everywhere. If someone was strong enough to get past them and reach her, there was little her intoxicated self could do stop them.

What walked into the room was far worse than any Lunar Empire assassin, for it was her youngest sibling, Joan Ddraig.

Joan was a totally different animal from her twin brother, Christian. Were as Ishtar had seen him to be more reserved, Joan was a brash and unrelenting force of nature. And even though Ishtar was now the Queen, her sister pushed her door open and came striding in like this very bedroom belonged to her.

Joan paused and her eyes glazed over the bed and more importantly the empty bottles around the bed. She didn't even bother to hide her displeasure at the sight with how her face screwed up a deep scowl came to life on her face.