How To Tame An Empress (BOOK I)

Chapter 45- A Fatal Conclusion

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She woke up with a startle, bending over to cough as water spurted out of her mouth and she breathed out a heavy breath, tiredly leaning back against my chest with closed eyes, working to get her breathing under control once more.

Silently, I walked back into our room and sat her down on the long couch, getting a towel and placing it on her head. Sitting in front of her, I worked to dry her hair as she hugged herself and no words were uttered between either of us for the next few minutes.

"Anastacius..." She brokenly called, voice cracking as she did.

"If it is about you leaving me then I do not want to hear it, Ria," I coldly replied. "Neither of us can live without the other, you know what I will do to those you love if you try to leave me and even then if you still try to run away, and in the slim chance there is that you get away, there is not a place in this Empire where you can hide from me," I added on, pausing in drying her hair to look down at her frightened face.

"Why can you not just love me as much as I love you?" I asked.

"What you call love, I call an unhealthy obsession," She quietly replied, body beginning to shake due to the cold water and I pulled her close to me when I noticed that, bringing her to sit on my lap and thankfully, she was too tired to do or say anything.

"...You should have just let me die," She whispered.

It felt as if my heart stopped beating when I heard her utter those words. Silently, she rested her head against my shoulder, eyes locked forward and unmoving, filled with regret for the life that she almost lost. The life that I almost took from her.

"...Is that what you wanted?" I looked away from her face and straight ahead, out of the window where I could see the clouds floating about in the blue sky, sagging branches from olive trees and colourful flowers that were beginning to wilt due to the approaching winter.

"For me to kill you?" I added on.

"I would rather die than have people dying for me... Especially if it is you that is killing them," She moved away from my shoulder, looking up at me and I tilted my head down to look away from the window and to her intense gaze.

I moved my head forward, resting my forehead against hers as I closed my eyes for a few seconds, taking the moment to breathe in her sweet scent.

"There is no point crying for a lost life, it will only hurt you more... Those people I killed will not be coming back, but that does not mean that you should go too," I stated.

She moved away from me, nudging my chest with her hands as a quiet plea of telling me to release her and not wanting to start another fight, I unwound my arms from around her waist and she jumped up, going to call a slave.

I sat down on the couch silently, watching as she left the room to properly wash her deceased child's blood off of herself and then I watched as she entered the room once more, turning her nude body away from me as the slave dressed her.

"Where are you going?" I asked as I watched her getting ready to leave the room.

"I... I'm going to see Evan and Ambrogio, I'll be in the garden," She meekly whispered out with clenched hands and didn't say or do anything else as I hummed at her.

Eventually, I nodded and she didn't waste a beat in leaving the room.

Standing up, I walked over to the open bar and poured myself a goblet of wine, glaring at my reflection in the mirror as I took a sip.

I grew up always being showered in praise. 

For my looks, my brains, athletic talents, and more. Personally, I never really thought much of it, if anything I thought I deserved everything that I had, because, other than my looks, I worked hard for everything else.