death is the only ending for the trash queen

Part 6

Cale needed to calm down. She needed a fucking drink–a real one, not the one's she pretended to have to please her adoring detractors. She used to drink for real when fooling them, it was better to do so and left less possibility to be found out, but she hadn't drunk a drop since her pregnancy.

At first it was of course about the safety of the baby. She couldn't and wouldn't do anything while Penelope was in the womb and she'd actually lived in the most docile state she'd been in since she was a child. And then when she was breastfeeding there was not a single drop in her system, she couldn't risk any harm coming to her precious daughter.

After that it just hadn't felt right.

Penelope was nearly two when Cale decided it ought to be safe to drink again, especially since she needed to act worse than ever to keep Penelope safe.

Her tiny little nose scrunched as she looked up at her mother and with clear teal eyes that always seemed to see far more than she should, Penelope declared that mama was stinky.

Cale hadn't touched it since. Sometimes she risked being called stinky by her daughter by splashing it onto herself but Cale wouldn't drink.

It was fine. She'd always been relatively sober when she threw her fits, she had an impressive alcohol tolerance after all. The only difference now was most of the time she drank water or tea from various suspicious looking bottles.

It had actually become quite a fun hobby. Emptying out a wine bottle only to brew tea inside of it with her daughter, experimenting with all the colors they could create with the ingredients. What taste profiles they could find with a little more honey or just a dab of lemon because she felt nostalgic for home.

Cale rarely felt a desire to drink at all. It never did much for her to begin with. But she liked the ritual of it. There was something about chugging down the finest wines like beer and sneering at all who watched before throwing the damn bottle at the head of the nearest thug.

It was a stress reliever to drink and fuck she needed to release some stress.

Alberu's impervious smile as pretended to care about Penelope's well-being was sickening to her stomach. The bastard never let his mask slip, not even once, showing just what a duplicitous scumbag he truly was.

Cale might have been able to understand the hypocrisy of hating her husband because he always concealed her true self if it was pointed out to her. But it was unlikely she'd give in even then, likely to cite that it was different because he was pretending to be a good person and that was far more dangerous than pretending to be trash.

It wasn't actually a sensible argument but Cale wasn't actually a sensible person.

Cale escaped the confines of the camp, throwing a broach at the face of the first escort who attempted to follow her and hitting him with pinpoint accuracy and discouraging the rest from following.

There was an unspoken rule in the palace not to follow the queen when she was in a throwing mood. It was a good way to get a lot of bruises and still fail at whatever job you were attempting.

Cale slumped ungracefully by a tree when the sounds of camp sounded distant enough.

She just needed a break.

Her hands still shook.

She couldn't tell Alberu that Penelope hated him on her own. What if that shallow man started to treat her coldly? What if Penelope lost his fickle affections and was treated with disdain by her own father?

She might hate Alberu but she didn't want that for Penelope. Never.

Cale curled up miserably, hiding her face in her knees as her shoulders heaved with shuddering breaths.