Cetlali spent the rest of her day with Masha and Athua, well protected by Athua's Imperial Guard. Athua insisted on making the day as bright as possible. They had a picnic in the garden with foods so decadent Cetlali thought she had died and ascended to orbit with the gods. Athua had a meeting the next morning, so she passed on the day-drinking. Cetlali and Masha made up for Athua's non-indulgence and drank far too much. They even went swimming in the pond like children on a summer's day, laughing together like they had nary a worry in the entire world. It was wonderful and well deserved.
They ended up back in Athua's rooms and ate dinner. Though it was a much more subdued affair, it was no less joyous. Their skin glowed, kissed and warmed by the heat of the day as they lounged in Athua's enormous art room. She had exquisite lighting from the large
glass roof above the atrium that also gave them a wondrous view of sunsets, clouds, and stars.
Upon a massive pile of cushions and pillows scattered on the floor, they talked about their hopes and fears for the next few years. Athua was concerned about leading people and her dream of one day being a mother, worried about trying to handle it and the Empire.
Masha was intent on becoming a commander in the Municipal Army by the time she was twenty. That left Cetlali wondering where the hell she should even start.
Getting out alive was the first thing that came to mind. Then heading to the North for protection. Athua had hinted the Cetwoll of Waingnam was approaching retirement and could use an apprentice. Cetlali was unsure if she wanted to run another's keep ever again.
For a good long time, she was so lost in her thoughts about what she wanted to do, she could barely speak. Reveling and revolting in the sickness swirling inside of her that was half giddy and half dread. She realized she never
really had the chance at such a simple thing, like having no one to please but herself.
It was late in the evening and the Vassour Elect's Complex was a mind-numbing quiet.
She saw Lovou earlier in passing and he'd given her a note that just had the word 'midnight' on it. She heeded his earlier insistence with a sincere dedication and burned the note as soon as she stepped into her rooms.
Although her hands were tremulous with terror, throughout that entire day, she kept get flashes of breathless tranquility. Something surged through her veins she hadn't felt since she was a child, running through the forests surrounding Cazar Shcomou. Her intention was training herself to fight with stolen padding and swords far too big for her.
Learning to protect herself was her first glimpse of freedom.
She was still in her dress, though her shoes were long forgotten. Loose leather trousers, a large tunic, a thick vest, and a sure weather cloak sat waiting for her to change into. She
just finished packing up her satchel. Stuffed with clean rags, old, but still good boots, a healing kit, spare daggers, extra clothes, and a few neutral toned headscarves to cover her hair.
She thought she could copy the style of some men in the South. They wore their silky hair long and tied it up on top of their heads within a stiff scarf and could fold it in such innovative ways. It was artful and regal. She might pass for a southern child apprenticing Lovou that way.
The scarf would even protect her hair from the elements. She'd have to see if it was alright for one of these men to share the skill with her.
Until then, she would do as Ayodele bid. A simple wind of material her around braided up twists and the cloak's hood would have to suffice.
She heard her door open and smiled like a pleased cat. "Are you trying to sneak up on me again, Seun?" She turned, "I thought I passed all your tests to see if my skill will suffice in the
—,"
The room spun. She felt choked by the sight of a crimson and umber wave coming to
consume her. Shock trembled out to the very tips of her fingers. She did not know if she would survive it. She'd faced down death too many times before. There had to be a limit.
Ezren stood in her doorway, wearing full scale armor and looking ready for war. She wasn't sure who was more surprised at that moment. It should have been Cetlali. She had the sudden and uninvited intruder in her rooms, armed with every weapon he knew best, gleaming along his waist like omens.
Unfortunately, the way he looked at her did not bode well. Eyes wide and bulging, a tugging of pure, incensed fury pinched his lips.
It made it seem like she was the egregious one.
She stood next to her own bed with a decent sized satchel and comfortable riding clothes on the sheets. A far more normal behavior than showing up in someone's room, armed to the teeth, when considering appropriate activities for the middle of the night.
"Vassour Elect," Cetlali spoke first, though she really shouldn't have. Her voice was a weak squeak, and it made her want to cringe.
"What's this?" His words clipped at her like shears.
She unfolded herself from her tension as best she could and let out a shaky exhale. The actual words she wanted to say came right along with all that bravery she earned herself earlier. "Would you mind telling me why you're in full scale armor, in my room, in the middle of the night?"
"You should be sleeping." He snarled, more testy than usual.
A scowl twitched on her face. She hesitated, but replied, "As should you."
His glare was hawkish as he spoke. "I came to retrieve you. There are dangerous murmurs in the Citadel." His gaze was gaining a painful focus as he loomed.
"Murmurs of what?" Her tone became weighted with a careful absence.
Ezren's glare was severe. His lips sharpened into something like a smile as he spoke. "Zhi Ovar Tate was spotted on the outskirts of the city."
"When?" Cetlali asked, alarmed, yet with a secret mild irritation at the moniker. Ovar did not deserve the title Zhi any longer. Nor did he deserve such regard from the very moment he harmed his brother. Fear crept back into her throat when she recalled how she, Athua, and Masha had been all over the palace. They even edged out into the city for a bit to help Cetlali gather some fleeing necessities in the guise of a shopping trip for Masha.
"We received the message around the evening meal. However, it was given far earlier than that." His tone was chilled and pulled her from her thoughts.
Cetlali frowned, eyes flashing around a room too full and too empty at the same time.
The tendrils of anger and confusion skittered in her mind and made her feel agitated.
He put his hand out to her, confident, consuming. His gaze transfixed her. "Come with me, Cetlali. I will keep you safe."
She leveled a contemptuous frown at him, leaning away from his hand like it was a threat.
"How?"
Ezren's gaze hardened and his jaw clenched.
"Cetlali, I insist you come with me immediately."
"Where's Xocthl?" Her voice was tentative.
Ezren's cheek twitched. She glared at him, demanding now, "Where's Lovou? Won't we need more protection? Ovar's supposedly amassed a band of fifty or more brigands to his cause. Going anywhere by ourselves would be a death wish."
"You and I shall be perfectly fine. Take your things and come with me," he snarled, eyes boring into her with a reprehensible calm.
"I'm not going with you," Cetlali replied with a flimsy foundation of strength.
The thunder of his boots brought him closer, and he reached to grab at her hair. It was a moment too late when Cetlali realized she could choose to fight back and live. Only a second or two of her efforts to do such earned her a mailed hand whipping across her jaw, making her see the starts again. She decided she wouldn't want to continue doing so. She stilled in Ezren's grasp. One hand fisted at the back of her head, tilting her face up to him, stretching the ache in the side of her cheek and neck where he had struck her.
He leaned forward, holding her still. Fury entrenched his tone. "Are you attempting to flee? From me?" The next words came bit out in an incensed grief, "After all I have done for you?"
"And what of all I've done for you?" Cetlali replied with a damp bitterness, realizing there was little she could do but be honest now. She
was alone and as desperate as Ezren's grip was for sure. Seun likely left for the night. Lovou wasn't supposed to be coming for her for at least an hour. Perhaps never if the rumors of his brother lurking about were true. A great sense of dread spread within her along with and a belated sense of regret for all those times she skipped out on prayers to the gods. Wasting time lighting candles would be worth it if she could garner some favor with Arguox. Just then, she'd be grateful for even the shadow of protection.
Alas, she was alone and a blasphemous nonbeliever. She shook in Ezren's grasp with the finality of it all sinking into her bones. Ezren could kill her in an instant if he wanted to. She could try to stall and see where that got her. Or she, for once in her life, could fight him. It went against the confusing feelings she had for him.
Everything that clung to the insides of her, like a parasite that had been burrowing for a lifetime. She was sure she didn't want to die, quick or slow.
Ezren's hand went beneath her jaw like a hook and forced her eyes to his. His snarl came out as a wordless garble, shaking her in his grasp despite the hands that clawed at him to let her go. "What of it? Hm? I took you in, I gave you purpose. You repay my offer of love and devotion with an intent to flee from me?"
He backed her up against her bed. "It is time enough that you show me the gratitude I am owed."
Cetlali gave him precisely what he deserved.
He didn't expect it in the slightest, either. His hands let go of her to grasp at the front of her dress. Her arm cocked back, she swiveled her hips, planted whatever weight she could, and threw everything she had into the punch. It landed solid on Ezren's temple and sent him hurtling off of her, back against the door with a loud bang.
"You don't touch me ever again!" She roared at him, her dress hanging off her shoulder and her hair in utter disarray. The look on her face was alight with determined fury. She stared
straight through him, goring him to the wall where he leaned, shocked.
"I have spent my life serving you. I have done everything you ever asked of me, or at the very least tried as best as I could. There was never even a chance I even came close to becoming all you wanted of me," Cetlali rasped out her fury.
"But now I realize it's not my perceived inadequacy that's the problem, it's that you ask too much. You always have. I was not born to fulfill your needs!" Her tone evened out to blankness first. "I don't want to be your steward. I don't want these expectations you have of me." Twenty years of suppressed rage burrowed a home in Cetlali's heart. It made her feel dauntless. Her voice bordered on a shriek.
"I don't want to be your wife! I am not beholden to you! I am only beholden to me!"
Ezren stood tall, eyes boring into her with a sudden, bleak rage. "I raised you. I fed you.
Clothed you. I gave you an education and opportunities others could only vaguely dream of." The tone shifted, becoming frenzied. "I gave you everything that you are, Cetlali! I
could have left you to burn or drowned you in the sea!" His roar blotted out her senses for a moment. He grew sour and turned snarling.
He strode back over to her quivering form and struck her in the face with his mailed fist.
Cetlali dropped like a rock and the next sensation was Ezren's boot ramming into her gut. She let out an agonized huff of air, much like knives going out and coming back in.
"I will not let you spoil all I have worked for.
Not when I am so close now," he kicked her again, and she flopped onto her back with a rasp. Wrapped up in agony, she was trying to wail for all she was worth. She could not, as air evaded her lungs. It was pure agony as she gasped and writhed on the ground.
He reached down, grabbing her hair again and lifting her by the roots. She wheezed, and he tossed her onto the bed, face first. "Would you refuse me so quickly if you knew what I had done for us, for our future? How I meant to give you an Empire? Hm?"
Dazed, she struggled to breathe as she turned her face from the blankets. A horrifying feeling of fading was thrashing through her as she choked on an inhale. It was far too difficult to focus. Ezren was moving too quick, all hands, anger, and force. She couldn't keep up with him.
The words swirled in her head. All of her other senses flapped and flickered like the dying caws of birds trapped in a storm. Ezren's hands dove beneath her skirts and he made a clumsy grab at the back of her knee. On instinct, she jerked up her leg and shoved him back. He faltered a mere step, but Cetlali used the moment from her shove to crawl across the bed and get to the other side of it. She just had to be away from him. She had to remember how to breathe. She did not want to die.
He grabbed her ankle faster than she had hoped and tugged her back. She was barefoot after such a long day, so kicking at the metal of his scale armor did her more damage than him.
She at least tried to use her powerful legs to
keep him at a distance as she strained against his grasp.
Ezren slammed a mailed fist against her knee. Ah, now she could scream, but her strength folded. He tugged her down onto her side. By the grasp he had on her head, Ezren struck a devastating hit to her temple. It made her crumble into darkness for a blank and timeless moment.
Reality all came back up with starting clarity. She was face down on the bed again.
Her skirts were up around her hips. Her legs felt numb aside from a searing, grasping heat on her thighs.
"No..."
A soft and helpless murmur into her blankets. Cetlali could only just move her arms.
Her heart beat out its paces frantically, signaling something inside her mind that made her want to fight. She opened her mouth to scream or breathe or cry. A mailed hand landed across it hard, metal digging into her chin and
cheeks. It was a death sentence. She didn't want to die, not like this.
"HELP!" A sudden voice screeched through the night. "HELP PLEASE!" It screamed again. Cetlali heard Ezren snarl. Her body fell jaggedly against the bed. Shaking hands planted against the plush material. Her arms wobbled as she tried to steady herself in the absence of his force.
"Wretched cunt..." Ezren grumbled airily from behind her somewhere. "Seems I should have slit her throat, to be sure."
Cetlali laid abandoned. The sounds of scale armor, buckles, and movement forced her consciousness to swim itself back into focus.
She rolled over, sitting up with a jagged sway.
She caught the sight of Ezren's back as he exited her room.
She couldn't remember why he was leaving the room. Cetlali thought she was going to throw up. There was a voice calling for help. It was a familiar she knew, but it wasn't hers.
"Seun..." Cetlali mumbled and fumbled off the bed. She regained her feet rather fast, if still graceless, and dashed towards the door. Still feeling boneless, she flung herself through the doorway, sliding to a stop against the opposite wall. Down the short hallway, she ambled after the scraping of Ezren's steps, like an executioner dragging their axe.
Dizzy, she blinked several times and pressed a hand to her head. Cetlali imagined she might have something leaking out of it with the way he struck her so hard. Her hand was thankfully clean when it came back into her vision. As she stumbled into her solar, there was just so much blood elsewhere.
The moment splashed into life in her mind like a vibrant painting, shaking her into awareness. Ezren stalked towards the door with a steeled determination. Cetlali's eyes snaked along the trail of blood that lead to Seun. She was halfway leaning on the doorjamb to the entrance to bolster her strength for another scream down the hall.
There was a horrifying amount of red soaking through her dress and down her side.
Ezren kicked the door shut. Seun fell back in a fright, tumbling to her backside and crying out in agony. Ezren threw the latch to the lock and slid the bar into place before turning back to Seun and pulling out his Nimcha.
Cetlali had already started moving. Barefoot and silent as a grave, she carefully reached for the cutlass at his other side. Simultaneously, she lifted her foot, ready to plant it against his hip. As she grabbed for the weapon in its sheath, she kicked at him hard, sending him sprawling across the room, into her table and chairs with a clamor.
Cetlali tried to drag Seun over to her hallway, back towards her rooms and a modicum of safety. Ezren was already standing.
She'd at least made it past the archway. The wall would shield Seun enough from the ensuing fight. Cetlali didn't want to die, and she refused to let anyone to die because of her.
Ezren spun on her slowly, scowling severely with a tight, furious grin on his lips. "Cetlali..."
He began with a scathing reprimand too painfully familiar of her time spent confessing.
"You're not to touch her either!" Cetlali snarled tearily. She raised up the cutlass in her hand, pointing it right at him as surely as she had ever done anything in her life. He watched the movement with a mounting rage building behind his gaze.
There was a sudden pounding on the door.
Cetlali jumped from fright and wanted to weep with joy at the sound of people trying to open it.
All she could truly focus on was the terrifying fury that took over Ezren after he'd taken his fill of her. It was a daring profanation, raising a sword against him. He charged at her immediately. There was shouting she couldn't understand. She gripped her sword and prepared to counter one of the finest, fiercest, most terrifying swordsmen who ever lived. One that seemed highly intent on killing her.
Ezren was at a slight disadvantage since the tighter quarters meant for lesser swings with his nimcha. Cetlali's proficiency with a cutlass meant she might just be able to keep herself alive for a somewhat admirable amount of time.
He seemed to compensate for his hindrance well enough. He swung at her swiftly and sharply jabbed, forcing her to anticipate his slashes and ensure she had the space to defend herself.
She swiped his swing away and sliced down, making him jump back in shock. She didn't dare smile, but she felt it in her entire body.
Something wild took hold of his eyes as he looked down at her. He came at her with a broiling rage and a growl so vehement she was sure it would be her last memory. She spun away from his lunge and kicked him in the side, sending him flying again.
Ezren chuckled mirthlessly as he spun back towards her and opined, "You don't fight with honor, Cetlali."
Cetlali gave him a blankly expectant look.
"Since when have men like you deserved honor?"
Ezren lunged again with a swiftness that startled her. It did not deter her for long, as the old man was slower than Lovou now, and appearing to overextend himself. She continued to counter his more wildly swinging strikes, gaining a slow confidence until he tired or made a mistake. The room thundered around them like they were inside the central cavity of a storm.
Ezren roared and knocked her cutlass from her hand with a deft flick of his sword. Cetlali stumbled backwards and rammed into her book shelves. Ezren charged on her, his sword aimed at her belly, before he caught the look on her face, ripened with fear.
Ezren froze then, staring at her with the point of his sword mere inches from her gut.
He seemed suddenly haunted. He threw his sword aside and grabbed Cetlali around the neck, crushing his mouth to hers. Groaning a
name she barely knew, his fingers squeezed slowly around her neck, tighter and tighter and tighter. Ezren wept, his lips pressing against her cheeks and eyes in desperation. Cetlali's arms flailed about her helplessly. She knocked off books and sent trinkets flying to the floor with a crash as she thrashed against his hold.
The words against her lips were long poisoned. "Must I always lose you?"
There was a sudden squelch. Ezren's grip tightened harshly, his face twitching with insurmountable agony. The next thing that came from his thin lips was a sudden gush of blood. Cetlali held the hilt of a throwing knife she'd hidden in her books. She drove it right up beneath Ezren's ear, the knuckle of her thumb catching on the sharp edge of his jawbone as blood seeped out over her hand.
"I was never yours to begin with." Cetlali's tone was vitriolic and tempered. She yanked the blade from Ezren's neck with a twist. He stumbled back several paces, hand gripping at his gaping wound in shock. He keeled over to
the side, down on one knee, staring up at her. A mouth, a mess of blood and gore choked out a name that didn't belong to her.
None of this did.