Where Kings Can't Rule

8. where the king yearns for a boy

The night is deep, dark and daunting, perfect for a devilish king like me.

An array of stars line themselves up over the ultramarine carpet, making the pathway of the moon God glittery and regal. I wish even I could walk upon such a path, with stars beneath me and shimmering in every corner.

But I have only one star in my life, and it makes me pallid, and burns me everyday in abominable grief. I want to run and accept I never inflicted pain upon her, that it was her who had averted her gaze away from me and crumbled my self.

But it's wrong.

I wonder if things would have been easier with either of us being dead. She at least cradled the feeble hope that I had taken up a different course of life while I helplessly accepted her being dead.

It would really have been better if we never faced each other. My courage threatens to buckle upon seeing her face.

Veils, maybe that's why Master had instructed me to ask the women to wear veils while this bastard self knew how to disobey the rules. Well, why not?

I had wished sincerely for a proper goodbye. Alas, I got a whole new chapter with her.

Roses peek at me from every bush. They are blood red in colour, much like Juno's blood that soaked my bedsheets after the massacre. Each rose here symbolises the departed soul of a woman who had succumbed to the whims and desires of the ruling king. Each new bloom caresses the wounds of each new death.

I sip the wine lovingly, wondering how the liquid of inebriation could stir up the elegiac thoughts inside my mind.

It is an otherworldly feeling to walk alone in this rose garden, all by oneself. No one to disturb, no one to poke me or point fingers at me. I can be at peace with myself, with all my sins and virtues. I can laugh at the face of the crying women shrieking in my visions. I can even cry at the loss of a maiden whom I had held dear.

I can also wish upon broken stars, stars which pale every day and vanish into dust.

Sitara- what a cursed woman you are in my life!

I had thought we were finally free from each other. I believed no one existed who could show a mirror to my conscience and point at my past. I believed no one lived to tug the strings and pull me back from where I had begun.

"But I will never change, Sitara. I won't let myself go to rack and ruin. Rise up, Borzou, you are a king now. You ought to be proud and complacent. That capricious woman be out of your life, once and for all."

I take a sharp turn to the right, almost bumping into the bark of a palmyra tree, but balance myself. In the far end of my vision is a pond, near which stands the infamous woman of this palace of Aratta.

Beautiful as ever. A pink veil is pinned on her head with golden pins and a band. It dances with the night breeze, maybe tickling her soft skin. I can see her side face though from afar, so her face is unveiled at present.