Lover's Curse (Red Queen Awards Winner)

Chapter Eighteen - Never Enough

The fountain feels my wrath.

Every droplet shimmers and pulses, as if the garden is a cage it will destroy in due time.  It simmers.  It does not explode. It has more dignity than my husband can muster.  It has purpose.

Dread is a more powerful emotion than shock.

I saw it in Salin Iral's face.  I saw it every mile I dragged him, screaming and flailing.  He begged me to kill me.  He begged me everytime I forced water into his lungs and out, never long enough to finish.  The fake apologies of a feeble man.

They did not satisfy me.  Nor did his death, half a mile from the palace steps, when I couldn't take his living and breathing and whining anymore.  His blood lingers in my hair.

I will not wash it out.

I should've torn their castle out from the foundation.  I should've proven iron rusts when pitted against rain, and a tidal wave washes away the strongest cliff.  But I left, and now I sit here in my rage, thrashing at enemies who dine in peace far away while he is gone and dead and gone.

Father.

Had I not run away, I might've been beside him.  I might have spotted Salin Iral as he slunk through the grass.  I might have prevented his body from collapsing and stiffening, never to rise again.

What kind of daughter am I?

Tiberias was right.  I did treat this like a game.

With her most of all.

Mare hangs at the corner of my vision, always out of reach, always on his arm.  I had been so focused on Maven, I'd forgotten who was pulling his strings.  It had been me and Mare against Maven and his temper.  I let her convince me she wasn't my enemy.

Worse.

I let her convince me she was my friend.

She whispers in his ear.  Serves as his council.  Disappears with him into her room for hours at a time.  He declared her as his consort, but she might as well be his queen.

What does that make me?

I tear holes into the front lines, spear Samos after Samos on my watery tendrils.  It's never enough.  Never enough to mend the hole of his absence.  Never enough to bring him back.

If I am not their queen, I shall be their ruin.

We meet with Piedmont. I am the whirlpool, the tsunami which crashes over Montfort and sweeps away their captured children.  The cyclone which holds a new vortex of power.

Never enough.

Harbor Bay crumbles beneath me.  Neither Calore brother will use it.  Neither will sit on their pitiful throne, small and pathetic in the face of my flood.

Never enough.

Never enough.

Never enough.

Somewhere far away, Mare offers me an iris.

I won't let it be enough.

A/N: Don't mind me just casually brushing past almost half of War Storm