Chapter 12 - Phoenix

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Third Person Perspective

Two men waited at the ball that night, both of them looking for the same person.

They waited together, in the outskirts of the crowd, looking for the one person they could recognize with or without a mask. Maybe it was helpful they had met at a masquerade. That way, no one could see the faces that matched the intertwined hands.

Homosexuality was no treason, but the political and social statuses of the men involved would bring nothing but peril for the world they lived in.

The little duckling and the little flame. They said nothing, but there they stood, together. They said nothing, but they waited all the same. They said nothing, for hours on end, until their palms grew cold and the chandeliers went dark.

Disappointed as they were, the men left with several regrets. They had said nothing to the other. They had waited for the one who would never appear. They had stood by in silence as the world danced around them.

But they did not know what would have happened if the last man had shown up.

They would have danced and laughed and shared stories until dawn. They would have drunk and ate and become foolish enough to do things they would later regret.

They would have revealed their faces to everyone in that ballroom, and the night would have dissolved into catastrophe.

Maybe, a certain handful of people would be too busy dealing with those three men to dethrone a certain queen.

Maybe, a certain president would be too distracted, maybe even too pleased by the scandal to dance with royalty. To dance with the devil. To stand at the edge of a cliff with nothing to hold him back, to light a fire so dangerous it would burn everything he ever knew down to the ground.

Maybe, a certain president would have been too distracted to change the world, one fire at a time. Maybe, a certain president would be too distracted to build a new world from the ashes.

After all, a phoenix could never fly if there was no tragedy to form its wings.

Maybe, just maybe, it was a good thing Karl Jacobs never arrived to the Royal Masquerade.

373 words

it's short ik sorry

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