Damon looked down at the floor, unable to meet the king's glare. He didn't think of his love for Pandora as him being unloyal, but the fact that the king did made him feel as though he had really done something wrong. "Your Majesty, I didn't have any control over this. If I had, it wouldn't have happened." He said, knowing it was a weak argument. But it was the best he could come up with when confronted by the scorn of his ruler.
The king shook his head, letting out a disappointed sigh. "I'm sure. That is the horrid thing about love; it sinks its claws into you slowly, and by the time you finally notice, it's already too late. But that doesn't make what you've done any better, Damon. Your love is no excuse for consorting with someone I consider to be my enemy, especially not if you were intending to hide her." He added. Damon forced himself to look up at his ruler, knowing full well that he couldn't stare at the ground if he wanted his words to make any sort of impact. "I was going to write a letter." He said. It sounded pathetic. But it was the truth. And right now, with Glebthop watching, the truth would be better than any lies Damon could conjure up. "You should have called. I could have offered some help keeping her trapped, or bringing her to a safe place where she wouldn't have been in danger of anyone from her side taking her back. We could have worked something out." The king said, looking a little offended.
"If I had wanted to be captured by you, I wouldn't have bothered staying with Damon." Pandora spoke up, breaking into the conversation. The king turned to face her, looking her up and down warily. "I'm sure. I can't imagine that you were intentionally trying to evade me, not if you decided to stay in the first place. I am actually rather honored and admittedly surprised that you've remained a voice of reason throughout this whole ordeal, despite having every reason to want to escape. My problem comes when my own subjects don't trust me enough to tell me when something this important happens." He said. Pandora scoffed. "Well, you do want me dead." She said. The king shook his head in disbelief. "And where did you hear that?" He asked. Pandora hesitated, thinking. "It's just widely known. Everyone in both kingdoms is well aware that you've always fully intended to kill me, if you got the chance." She said. The king laughed, scornfully. "That's because the only statement I ever made about my intentions if when I catch you was when I was twelve, immediately after you had killed my father. That was five years ago. I've had time to grow and heal, and begin to see that my dear old dad might not have actually been that great of a parent, or even a person. Your entire kingdom's opinion of me is based off of the emotions of an overwhelmed preteen and the fire that news sources built that up into." He said.
Damon scrunched his brow, completely confused. "But you've been adding steady increases to her bounty for years, and you've been putting up new posters every month to make sure that people know about her and the money they would get from bringing her to you ever since the day your father died." He said. The king nodded. "That's pretty standard practice when someone's acting like a wolf in your flock of sheep, Damon." He said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "I really did want you dead at first." He added, turning back to Pandora. "I was grieving, after all. But then I got a bit older, and realized that the only real reason I should have wanted to stop you was because you've been brutally murdering everyone important in my kingdom and taking my subjects hostage for slave labor. My people are more important to me than my father. I loved him early in life, but then I started to see some of the things he did and...well, let's just say that I lost all my respect for him. I stopped visiting his grave after I found out that he was actively encouraging some of the stuff that your people do, and even funding it. He's the reason things have gotten so bad over the past decade or two, and I hate him for that. All the horrid things that happen to the people of my kingdom at the hands of heroes is almost completely his fault, if you look at it through an unbiased lense." He sighed, curling his lip in disgust at the thought of what the former king had done. Damon was shocked. He had always heard the man referred to as a 'god-given saint' in conversations. A million questions were flying through his head at breakneck speeds, demanding his attention with a vengeance. But he kept his mouth shut, knowing that his input probably wouldn't be welcome.
"So, you see, I have no reason to hate you for what you did to my father. I do, however, have a very good reason to hate you for what you've done to my kingdom." The king added, staring pointedly at Pandora. The former hero winced, looking down at the floor with an ashamed expression on her face. "I am so sorry about all of that. I should have seen that what I was doing was wrong long ago." She sighed, looking genuinely ashamed. The king nodded. "You should have." He agreed. "But I'm not going to hold it against you. I know just what sort of manipulation your former boss is capable of, and I'm sure that played a big part in how you ended up seeing what you were doing as right for so long." He smiled. Damon stared at him, more than a little shocked. He had expected a death sentence for his lover, if not something worse. After all, he had heard no end of gossip about just how much the king hated Pandora. But the way this was playing out, he was starting to feel that he might have gotten the wrong impression of his ruler. Which, admittedly, wouldn't be all that hard. After all, it was only the people close to the king that ever bothered announcing anything important, and they always kept it vague enough that anyone who wanted to would be able to put a hidden meaning into the words that could easily be taken as fact and quickly turned into into a whole conspiracy.
Pandora smiled, relieved. "Are you actually saying that you don't intend to kill me?" She asked. The king paused. "Well, that depends. I'm still not happy with either of you." He cast Damon a glare that spoke more to his displeasure than words ever could. "...But that doesn't mean that I'm going to go handing out death penalties. I'm not my father, after all." He smiled. Damon opened his mouth to ask some of the questions tearing through his head. But before he could even get a word out, the was a sound like an explosion near the castle doors. He spun to see what had happened, shielding his face to stop any of shards of wood that had been flung away from the noise from impaling him in the head.
YOU ARE READING
Morals of a Villain
General Fiction(Completed) Damon, a Duke by right, has never particularly liked the morally righteous narcissists he frequently has to deal with in everyday life. While others might see them as heroes courageously pitting themselves against the horrible and sadist...
