The silence that permitted itself throughout one of the royal carriages as it drove back to the castle was nearly suffocating, the Queen sitting regally on one side while the King stared at her furiously on the other.
His eyes were narrowed and his mouth formed an unpleasantly straight line as he watched his Queen for any slip up, any movement that indicated her fear of him, but there was none.
She continued to stare out the window sightlessly like a blind man, maintaining the posture of a statue as Poseidon thought of what he could say to reprimand her.
When he opened his mouth, ready to rain as much fury as he could upon her, she turned her gaze to his, her shoulders visibly sinking as she took in his angered position.
"I know what you're going to say, my King," she uttered cautiously, something that Poseidon never associated with his Queen, "but there is neither regret nor remorse that I feel towards what I've done."
Poseidon settled his trident against the carriage wall, his eyes clouding over while he glared at his wife.
"What you've done, Amphitrite, is unforgivable, and punishable by death if I so deem fit."
"Then order it." she replied curtly, not wasting any time in staring back out the window.
Poseidon was stunned speechless, her statement catching him off guard as he inspected her more closely.
He couldn't remember the last time he had really gazed at his Queen in love. It had been weeks if not months, for he always found himself busy with the jobs his brother Zeus placed on his head and the women who constantly berated him.
Now as he looked at her, Poseidon frowned with the way her skin had lost the pallor it once had, the glow from her skin was gone, she was far skinnier then the last time he could think of and what troubled him even more was how unabashedly she accepted his statement of death.
"What do you mean order it?" he asked briskly. "Executing my wife would cause a scandal so large it would involve all seven seas."
"Scandal hasn't seemed to bother you before." Her words came out barely above a whisper, her eyes centering directly on his. "I don't see why removing your wife from the equation would create anymore scandal then you already have, it would rather make room for more of your women to take the crown."
"What do you mean 'my women'?" he barked out. "I have had no women, Amphitrite, since--"
"Since my birthday celebration." Came her throaty reply as she refused to look him in the eyes any longer.
Yet again, Poseidon was silenced, his anger flourishing in bounds.
Grabbing his wife's hand he jerked her body to his, making it so that she was so close that he could feel her breath on his skin and she could feel the sinew of his heated muscles through her lace gown.
"I never--"
"I saw you." she gasped out hoarsely, her eyes beginning to brim over with her tears. "With one of the maidens from the ball -- in our bedroom. So do not tell me you haven't been with a woman in some time, Poseidon, because you and I both know you never let the beautiful ones get away."
"Amphitrite--"
She raised her hand to halt him before disentangling herself from his arms to move to the other side of the carriage, sitting as far away from his as she could.
"I've known you haven't cared for me in centuries, Poseidon, because despite the fake apologies and every refusal you've made in bedding a woman, I have forgiven you. I've given you my heart again and again for you to shatter into more pieces every time you do it."
Poseidon opened his kith to speak, but she stopped him again. "I think my heart is too far gone to ever bring back, but I beg you, do not lose the trust that our children have in you. Because when you finally lose their trust, I am afraid you will have none left."
Tapping her hand against the roof to signal the driver, the Queen paused to let the carriage slow its galloping to a canter before opening the door and stepping out into the bustling village.
"Our children are all you have left," Amphitrite stated with the dignity that only a royal herself could maintain, avoiding Poseidon's mad dash for her arm as she stepped farther into the moving crowd around her, "you lost me a long time ago, Poseidon, and I lost you. I accepted that, but please, love our children with all the love you never gave me. Please, if you ever loved me, just do this one thing, for me."
Her words were like a slap to the face while the unrestrained tears pouring down her cheeks were another indication of his failure as a husband, it killed him to see her eyes so full of pain.. pain that he had caused.
"Love, please," he begged, reaching his hand out in a last attempt to keep her close, anything to keep his wife with him, "get back inside the carriage. I promise I'll change, I promise. Please, don't leave me."
Amphitrite had turned her back to his hand, but at his request, she spun around like she had the hounds of hell on her heels.
"I can't!" she screamed in agony, all her rage breaking through her like water through an open dam. "I have tried and tried again to forgive you, but you turn back to your old ways the second I'm not looking! I am done with being used! I am done being the Queen who encounters shaking heads of pity because her husband is out with a different woman every night! I am done with this life and I am done with you!"
The pins from her darkened locks had fallen out as she had screamed in her fury, the long length falling down to her waist and her cheeks flushing pink as she tried to walk backwards, stumbling away from the defeated figure of her husband.
"Amphitrite!" he called out to her in desperation. "You can't walk away from me like this, you'll come back! You always do!"
Bystanders on the street turned their heads to watch him in curiosity, but his eyes were only for his wife who continued to disappear in the developing masses.
Her movements turned into ones of desperation and she looked back one final time before she darted around a corner. "Not this time, Poseidon. No more will I be seen as the weak one, I will be strong as I should have been a long time ago. And as I see it, you won't be losing anything. You can't lose what you have already lost."
With her lace gown flowing and her hair as well as her crown flying in the air as she ran, Queen Amphitrite fled the town, running as fast and as far as her weary feet would take her.
Leaving behind nothing more than her gold, pearl encrusted comb that sat in the shifting sand near the feet of the defeated king.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Mount of Palamör raised itself high above the deep waters of the Aegean Sea as its blue landscape stretched for miles wide, the black caps sitting high atop the Mount's tip reminding Alena of the mountains that sat far above the surface, reaching high up into the clouds.
It had been a few hours since she and Damari had escaped the King, but her mind still wandered to the safety and well being of the Queen along with Rhode, Bea and Triton.
She had spent the time on her hippocampus contemplating whether it would be possible to somehow ensure the safety of them when the neighing of Damari's hippocampus drew her attention to the abandoned path they had been riding on.
No travelers had stumbled upon the two of them while they made their way towards the Mount, the only sounds they had heard were from the clicking of the hippocampus' reigns in between their fingers as they directed them down the path.
Now, as Alena tilted her head to better hear what could have startled Damari's steed, she noticed that Damari hadn't spoken since they had left Amphitrite and the others behind.
His face was expressionless and he allowed his body to sway back and forth with a weightlessness that made Alena surprised he hadn't fallen off yet.
She could see him staring ahead at the Mount, but he wasn't looking at it like he knew it was there. He was barely acknowledging it while his hippocampus grew more distressed by the second.
Sidling her hippocampus up against his, she touched his arm carefully so as not to startle him with her approach.
"Are you okay, Damari?"
He turned his head weakly in her direction, nodding somewhat before returning himself back to his former position.
Alena leaned herself closer to his face, looking at him cautiously and feeling uncertain as to what she was suppose to do next.
"Are you sure? You don't seem like it."
"I'm fine." he grunted, pulling his cloak tighter around his neck. "I don't understand why you're so concerned when I said I was, alright?"
A frown pulled at her lips. "I was simply asking, there's no need to be a complete piece of kopros about it."
Her words caused him to jerk up right from his slouched position and her wrist to twist with a strange amount of shock that she would actually consider painful. She was no longer worried about what was wrong, but why he was upset about it.
"I know something is wrong, Damari, and I ask you now to tell me before I think of other ways to snatch the information from you."
"I'd like to see you try." he snapped angrily, his hands tightening into white knuckled fists. "It's nothing that a siren like you would ever understand. How could you? You don't even know what a family is."
Alena stared at him intensely, her heart beating faster as his words struck their mark.
She wasn't sure what she felt more, fury or the immense sorrow at how true Damari's words were, thinking how close yet so far away from the truth he was.
She tightened her fingers around the reigns and looked Damari directly in the eye. "You have no idea what you're talking about."
"Oh I think I do," Damari laughed, bringing his hippocampus to a halt on the side of the road and sliding down to the ground before coming around to the other side to stare directly up at Alena, "I think that I know exactly what and who you are and that fact alone scares every fiber of your being."
"No it doesn't."
"Yes it does!" he rebuked quickly, grinning with satisfaction when she slid off her saddle to look him dead in the eye. "You try to hide your fear, you try to hide any and all insecurities that you could possibly have when being associated with anyone other than yourself because it makes you feel weak! But it doesn't work and you know it!"
"Stop lying!" she screamed, holding her hands over her ears.
"But I'm not lying, Alena!" Damari shouted back at her, pulling her closer to his looming figure. "How can you lie to yourself? When you know deep inside that what you really want, what you have always ever wanted, is a family to call your own?"
Her eyes flashed as her hands dropped from her ears completely, her expression enraged. "Shut up! You don't know at all of what you're saying! It isn't not having a family that scares me you idiot! It's never been that!"
"Then what is it?!" he interrupted her abruptly. "I don't see how you expect me to understand when you won't acknowledge your fear even to yourself! You are like one of the cowering children in my village who finds delight in destroying everything in sight as long as they never get in trouble for it. They never find themselves in trouble, and neither do you! You hide in fear that you will one day be captured yourself, and that you will have to pay for all the destruction you've caused others in this world."
"When will you stop uttering such nonsense!" she finally cried out, lifting her hand dangerously close to his cheek as if she mean't to strike him. "You judge me when I have done no wrong to you, I have done no wrong to your family, and you speak such awful things about me that have no point to them at all! Well you know what? You want to hear what you've always wanted to hear, Damari Callos? I am afraid! Not because I fear that I will be captured and tried for my murderous ways and not because I hope to have something I've never had, but because I want something that I once had that was so close and so dear to me, but was snatched away!"
This caused Damari to pause in his thoughts with painstaking awareness. "Alena, what do you mean--"
"I had a family!" she shouted, feeling something inside her snap as she poked her finger into his chest to punctuate every word. "I had them and I lost them. I lost them! I don't remember who they were or who I was no matter how hard I try, but when I was connected to you through the bond I was able to glimpse them for a few moments. It seems so cruel to know them and know I had a life with them, but not remember anything about them apart from being a creature that does nothing but kill!"
"Alena, you aren't useless--" Damari began.
"How am I not!" she questioned loudly, her eyes wide with frantic and desperate need. "I am a monster, Damari. I would be better off dead and everyone knows it. I know it and I am afraid because I actually had a family; the only people in this world who cared about me, who didn't think I was a monster, and I don't think I'll ever see them again."
Her voice came out on a choked whisper as she turned her head away from Damari, hiding her face in her shoulder as she trembled, horrified that she had allowed herself to tell him one of her secrets.
However, Damari didn't look at her with the pity that she thought would be evident in his blue eyes. If she had seen pity she didn't know what she would have done, but he only gazed at her with compassion and worry, something she wasn't used to having from anyone else.
His hand slid delicately from her wrist, over the silver bonding, all the way up her arm and over her shoulder to rest lightly on her soft cheek.
Skimming his thumb over her cheek bone, he tucked a strand of her silky black hair behind her ear, wondering if anyone had ever told her that she was truly beautiful. That no one, not even one of the goddesses, could compare to her beauty or that the kindness she had shown to his father had impacted him in a way that no one ever had.
A contented sigh slipped from between her lips at the feel of his fingertips on her skin, her eyelids closing with the pleasure that coursed through her with the ordinary brush of his finger across her.
"Alena," Damari whispered huskily, his pupils dilating into nothing more than a dark blue in the midst of a world of black, "I care about you."
Her breath rushed out of her in one swift motion, her head jerking up to look into his with shock and the smallest glint of hope.
"You don't mean that."
"But I do," he muttered breathily, lowering his mouth so that he could whisper directly into her ear, "so there is at least one person in this entire world that cares about you, Alena Cali, don't you ever doubt that."
His other hand slid to the small of her back while his other twined itself in her hair, arching her into him just as his lips moved skillfully close and captured hers in a kiss.
~*~*~*~*~