𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀 𝐒𝐔𝐂𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘. 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍.
It's the beginning of a new age when Jaylah Imperatrix seemingly returns from the dead to reclaim her throne. And in perfect timing.
In her absence, evil has be...
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Act 2 Chapter 87 ALEXANDER
The words blurred on the page. Alexander blinked. It didn't correct anything. The breath he let out of his nostrils nearly fanned the paper off the desk.
It was well past midnight, but he was adamant on reading at least a whole page on his own. But as he looked at it, some of the letters blended together and switched in his brain and didn't look like words at all. Though there was no one to witness his numerous tries, Alexander still felt like he'd let someone down.
He couldn't seem to get past the second sentence. He had a hopeful start, but... His thoughts repeatedly circled back to earlier. The argument. A rather one-sided one, but not for lack of trying. And the worst aspect, the things she said to him when she deigned to retaliate. It wasn't like her. Alexander thought she'd cut him down and whatever flimsy ties were between them would be cut as well. But she held her tongue and took the higher approach he never saw coming. She said all the right things, which angered him because he knew she only said it because she needed more out of him. That was perhaps the only upside of knowing she hadn't been the one to sell him out: that he was still needed for something, even if it was just stolen intel from the Czar.
Fuck her. Truly. He was tired of being used, used, used. How many times did he have to be taken advantage of before there was nothing left, before his body turned to a shriveled husk with everything leeched out by people like her?
Alexander wished she had sold him out. It would have made this whole ordeal so much more cut and dry. Then it would have made sense that he hated her for what she was and for what she wasn't. He hated that she was the worst person possible to know of his ever-burning, all-consuming shame. He hated the suspicion lurking in the back of his brain that—despite her constant manipulation—he couldn't read because she wasn't present. A cruel trick his own mind had played on him.
Bouncing his leg restlessly, Alexander turned to the rest of the room, which was bathed in flickering golden light from the candle. I hope you find your quarters as luxurious as you wish, she'd said. They were even more so than he expected. In all the stories his mother told him as a child of far away places and untouchable kings and queens, he never had the capacity to imagine anything like this. The palace put the spectacular domed roofs and golden streets of the Gilded City to shame.
Alexander was staying in the largest guest room he'd ever been in, easily twice the size of the nicest inn money could buy. There was a four-poster bed wide enough to fit his whole body if he chose to lie sideways, and two sitting areas. What would any one person do with two sitting rooms? They each had a chandelier with a hundred curved glass pieces for the light to reflect off of. He watched the way specks of light splayed over the framed artwork on the wall.
It was so untouchable, so superior in its beauty that he felt as though there had been some mistake. Just weeks ago he'd been doomed to a life of servitude. He did not belong in a place like this.
It was not that he wasn't happy to be free. But that collar around his neck had carved something from him when it was removed, and no amount of freedom or wealth or even vengeance would get it back. It had been that way ever since he was in the belly of that Oceanic ship at nine years old, he'd just had to learn it the hard way.
It made being around the courtiers and their exuberant facades even more off-putting. Some of them were old military heroes—or that's what they called them, because they belonged to the winning side. Most had only been following orders from their greedy king, but it didn't soothe the sting of having to shake their hands and know that despite their crimes, Alexander was a guest within their home. Forever the outsider.
She'd warned him of how two-faced her courtiers could be as they schemed their way up the aristocratic ladder, and Alexander was no stranger to calculation, but this felt different. When he sensed their distrustful gazes on him, he knew they did not see him as an equal. Of course it was only because of his foreign nationality and that they had no idea who he actually was. They could not smell the stink of submission on him the way he could. But it wore away at him regardless. He stuck out even in the crowd of Ermalai's men because no matter what exterior he put on that day, Alexander could never be like them in the ways that mattered.
It hardened the malice in his heart, thinking of the vapid men and women in the court who would throw him to the wolves if they were allowed to. It made it even easier to enjoy the knowledge that he would wreak havoc on them under Daggen's direction.
Cursing under his breath, Alexander pushed the papers away. He gave up trying to read for the night. It was easier that way.
