Alice Returns

Chapter Eight ♠ Blood Family

"My lord, the Duchess Lotus has requested your audience as of now. Shall I send the Duchess in?" A man, cloaked in red, trembled at the bottom of his throne, casting his eyes down at the floors, who dared not to meet the King's eye. 

 Michealis didn't answer. He stared at the snitched up doll; with it's hair like spun golden threads, it's easily flustered cheeks tinged with rosy colors. It's small, petite lips that was a natural velvet color. Her soft, blue dress, that had snow colored silk ribbons, tied to her sleeves wrist, to keep it from being a curtain to her hands. She wore gloves under those Prussian blue sleeves. The gloves with colorless tinged to it, pure as snow; and black laced the hem of her gloves. It was Wonderland custom, as so be it.

 The doll was beautiful; nearly identical to her. Nearly, being the key word as presented here. To compare such fake beauty in the doll, to authentic beauty to her, it was nearly burlesquing her in doing so. It lacked life and light in the eyes. Both eyes were emeralds. Both were laced with long, black as midnight lashes, and had large, innocent eyes. But the doll lacked life in them. All it did, was bore it's eyes into yours; a meaningless thing in doing so.

 Michealis, in extreme frustration, let out a violent snarl, and threw the doll across the room, smashing it's head against the wall; cracking it's glass head, shattering it's dull eyes, and skull. It's arm laid deattached from a distance away, and it's dress laid worn from the impact. What a disgrace to her. The doll's hair is wispy as so to compare to her hair, that casades down to her waist. And so those hands, the doll being small and fragile, and hers, being delicate as a pianist.

 "What a disgrace." Michealis, voiced his thoughts out with disgust. He turned towards the twitching man beneath his throne. "Send the Duchess in, I suppose." He paused, and snatched his cane, and thrust it towards the man. "And get out of my sight, you filth."

 The depravity of his heart, dipped in black ink, and had corruption painted over it. As it harden like tar; and became nothing but stone. That, was Michealis; King of Hearts. The Red King. The King stained in blood.

 The man nodded frantically, and with his quivering, pathetic self, he scrambled out of the room, and the large doors of the room, he slipped out; and whispering voices came of the Duchess Lotus, and the servant.

 Michealis stared blankly at the broken doll. He scoffed silently, and tossed his head, having his drifting, golden locks of hair, fall out of his eyes, revealing royal blue eyes. The eyes thundered with corruption and malice, as his attention turned towards the doors opening.

 HIs gaze fell on the Duchess, Lotus. She was younger than him by four years; sixteen. Although, in Wonderland, everyone had stopped aging at a certain number. She walked in with grace, as well as a young girl of genteel upbringing should. Her chin raised high, and her scarlet hair, tied up in a hair-style, with loose curls out of her hair, in a high rose-styled bun. Her cheeks were flushed, but her eyes were dull and emotions.

 She wore a forest-green dress, that hugged her tightly, and blossomed out like a lotus flower below the waist. She had her hands in charcoal colored gloves, that were folded firmly at her front. "King Michealis." She said quietly, her gaze sliding over Michealis easily as water, and landed on the broken doll in the far corner. She hid her distaste, and concealed it in a stoic expression.

 Michealis scoffed, and slumped back in his throne. "What is it, Lotus?" He asked, in a monotone voice. "You don't visit me often, cousin." He empathized on the last word, just to see her squirm. 

 "I-I . . . I came by your palace just last week. You . . . dismissed me." Her stoic expression fell, and left a flustering Duchess.

 Michealis feigned a pondered look, and then laughed bitterly. "Of course, yes. I didn't want to be bothered by your presence, Lotus." The Duchess' face fell at the last word. Michealis ignored this, and started picking at his glove with complete boredom. "I was feeling, rather, generous, today. Lotus." He said the words as if it was a gift from God.