Villainous [Wattys 2021 Shortlist]

MALEVOLENT 30: Him

Dante dodged the vase. Barely. It skimmed his shoulder before hitting the wall with a tremendous smash, and exploded into a thousand pieces which flew in all directions. Several of them hit him.

With a third scream, Delilah lunged for another one on her bedside table, aiming it like a javelin. He was forced to use his fighter's reflexes to avoid it, and a shard grazed his cheek, leaving a thin line of red.

Blood. Did that mean this was real and not a nightmare? None of her dreams had included this, but how, how could it be him? Here? She couldn't, wouldn't, believe it.

"Get - out!" were the first words that came out of her as she hurled a small ornament from her childhood at him.

He - the figure, the wraith - ducked.

"Delilah, stop throwing things."

Even that voice made her flinch; she had forgotten the pure command he possessed, the way everything he said compelled his subjects to obey. But not her.

"Is this a trick?" She jumped off the bed and landed in a fighting stance. "Are you here to finish the job you started in the mountain pass? Is it even you or are you some apparition?"

"Delilah, calm down." He advanced, and the faint moonlight threw his features into sharp relief: pale, angular face, dark eyes overshadowed by his eyebrows, raven-black hair matching the cloak he wore, enveloping his tall figure. His mouth, cheekbones and chin could have been cut from glass.

"Calm down? Who are you to tell me to calm down?"

He reached for her wrists but she snatched them back.

"Don't touch me."

"All right." To her surprise, he lowered his hands. This close, she could inhale the scent of sweet, tangy pine and dusty rock from his mountain home. Maybe he really was real.

"Why are you here? How are you here?"

"I requested to come as part of the embassy for the wedding of the Princess of Pelenu. The council allowed it under conditions: I am to be escorted by a guard at all times, I and my delegation handed in all weapons and allowed ourselves to be subjected to a full body and luggage search, and I am to be accompanied at all times by the Pelanan ambassador who has been part of my council ever since the war."

And yet here he was in the middle of the night, having somehow exited his guarded room alone. 

"And no one thought to tell me?"

"They all want to keep us as far from one another as possible; they placed my room at the opposite end of the palace."

"So you've continued to rule since the battle," she said coldly, lifting her chin and arranging her posture into that of one monarch addressing another - it did not matter that she had not taken the throne yet. "Seems the war worked out surprisingly well for you, didn't it?"

"No." He loomed in the centre of her dark room, filling it like no one else could, dominating the surroundings. It had been so long that seeing him was surreal, but his features matched the ones she'd seen in her dreams perfectly, thrown into sharper relief. The hollows of his cheeks were more pronounced and purple ringed his eyes like bruises, betraying lack of sleep, but somehow all served to enhance his allure. "Since the war, I have become a puppet ruler, a figurehead meant to placate my people. My council is full of spies watching my every move. I am not allowed to speak to my friends, to express myself, and Vale moves in the direction the council wishes. They have crippled us so we can never fight again. Only when I'm alone can I be myself."

"Sounds familiar," Delilah said bitterly.

"Are we not allies, Delilah?"

"We have not been allies since you abandoned me to die on the battlefield."