ᴡᴍᴍᴀᴘ: ᴏɴᴇꜱʜᴏᴛꜱ

Immortal.

Claude de Alger Obelia had not ascended the throne by any normal means, but who was to say it wasn't meant by the Fates for him to become Emperor?

The Empire prospered under his reign, he fixed what had been broken by Anastasius, and he had restored the trade relations, the alliances, the peace treaties between every nation from the West to the East and he- he was a good ruler. 

Because even with this name of his, he was the true immortal that the people had wanted.

Until Diana came.

Diana of Siodonna came to him like the breeze of the first spring of the year, bringing with her, eyes the shade of roses, clothes in the shape of roses, her love in the form of breathtaking beauty. 

She was the only one for him. If only he had been clearer to those people he had kept within those palace walls.

He heard their whispers, their ghastly eyes following his love around in the darkened shadows- how jealous whores wanted to make her trip on their feet or rip up the dresses he sent to her as gifts of his devotion. 

For in the shadows he lay, lying in wait for the single opportunity to take care of them, once and for all, to tear them apart from the very seams of the matter they were sewed together with. He should not have waited.

The moment Anastasius was dead, he should have just slaughtered them all like the mere cattle they were, their ilk were lives that meant nothing to him, nothing worth sparing in his eyes. 

But more than that, he should never have gone further than touching someone like Diana. If he had truly loved her, he wouldn't have made her try to choose. If he had loved her, he would have let her go when they first met.

He was greedier than he thought he was.

It was never meant to end well. Even with all the days of chasing after her, spending blissful mornings in the gardens, at the lake, finding her little trinkets that he thinks would look beautiful on her, he doesn't see the faint loneliness that crosses those eyes of hers. 

Those eyes that cry for freedom from this loneliness, from this environment that has trapped her in these walls that were bedazzled to hide the monsters that lurked within them. She was never meant to be locked up, she was always meant to be free.

It was their written tragedy. For he, born not with the name of "Immortality", was truly immortal the moment he took his place as the rightful ruler of Obelia. And she, Diana- was not. 

He would spend decades upon decades without aging, but she- she would age, and she, as young as she had been, had left this world earlier than she should have- all because of him. 

He had thought their meeting was one decided by the Fates, and it had been so foretold, but that should have been all. He should have watched from afar, should not have gone too close to the blinding love that was Diana. 

"Dium" the sky, "Dius" the daylight, "Divine". Diana.

He would be able to weep for her for years and years and years, but he would rather the gods have taken him the moment they had taken Diana away from him. 

The moment they had given her wings to ascend to the heavens above, he would have given anything to go with her, but to keep her alive, forever, eternally with him? He would have given away his psyche given the chance. 

For his heart was already Diana's. It had always been hers.

He finds a note in her lovely handwriting, just days after she had passed- he hated even thinking the word- that she had passed, he loathed it. The note in her signature loopy l's and the neat little c's.