The Infernal King | 1 ✓

CHAPTER XIX | GOLD AND RUSTING METAL

       THE KING'S GAZE still trailed on the enraged witch as she stormed from the dining hall like a hurricane, glossy black hair flying out behind her. Maarit knew that he was watching her—she did not even need to look back, and she dared not do such a thing. She reached the staircase and darted up them as rapidly as her legs could carry her when she heard his voice.

His voice, normally velvety with self-importance, had become uneven and rough like pilled silk. It was no longer monotone either, but instead emanated power to have anything—even wars—halted for him. It had the hollowness of someone who had never loved and been loved. He bellowed her name and thundered after her; even then, she refused to turn around and continued on her path to nowhere.

Maarit was not afraid, and she would not bow to him—or to anyone.

He could have easily stopped her by telling Picard—who had retreated into the corner to play a game of chess against himself—to conjure an invisible barricade, but the ruthless king did not.

"Stop," he hissed, "or I will call my two favourite guardsmen to stop you for me—I believe that you are rather well-acquainted with them by now."

That phrase was, quite possibly, the only one that could make her stop in her tracks. Maarit shuddered and remembered the two guards: derogatory comments that boiled her blood, whispers in her ear that caused her to bare her teeth, breath on her neck that made her skin crawl.

"They are certainly not the greatest of guards, but I consider them my favourites because of their idiocy," King Theodoracius continued from the bottom of the staircase. Maarit could almost hear the contempt in his tone. "They never ask questions, do they? They are perfect for doing the dirty work because they don't seem to possess the capability of thinking twice about it."

Her back was still turned away from him, but she heard all of his words loud and clear over the clang of multiple utensils on one single plate. She listened to him speak, gaining more insight into the murderer's twisted mind and how he reasoned.

"Yes, I know how much you love Sergius and Obed," he said. "As I understand it, they enjoy their time with you very much."

She closed her eyes in an attempt to prevent a flood of horrid remembrances from penetrating her mind once more. Prepared to face him, Maarit turned around and slowly made her way back to the bottom of the stairs.

The witch nearly reached the bottom, but she stopped two steps above him so that she would be looking down at him. Standing over the king, she attempted to look intimidating, but her pretentiousness did her no good; all the same, King Theodoracius gave off an aura of grandiosity that had clearly been inherited from his father. Though she pretended otherwise, she was nothing compared to him—like rusting metal in comparison to solid gold.

"You have to feed them," she demanded, shaking with anger. "What you're doing to those servants is despicable. You are despicable."

"It is truly astounding to see the greed that hunger can bring about amongst human beings," he mused, his attention suddenly drawn away from Maarit and towards the servants. Unsurprisingly, there was not a shred of remorse in his words.

She could not help but notice that he had regained his usual velvety tone.

"That is not greed, that's—it's—deprivation!" she shouted, gesturing towards the long table. "They are not being greedy by eating because they have been deprived. You clearly have more than enough food, but are actively choosing not to give it to them. I wish you knew what it was like to be starved."

Maarit glowered at his smirking face from behind her curtain of hair before realizing something important: she had leverage because he needed her alive.

"Feed them or I'll starve myself to death, just to give them every bit of food you give me," she ordered, thinking that this had to work.

He only ignored her once more.

"It is human instinct, is it not?" King Theodoracius pondered, his voice laced with torpidity and his boredom-ridden brown eyes locked on the servants. It was as though the fact that he was torturing them did not faze him in the slightest. "The want to survive, I mean." He paused, only to purse his perfect lips, sigh and turn to face her once more. "I don't believe you when you say you'll starve yourself to death. Sooner or later, instincts always prevail over even the most fervent obstinacy."

"Is that a chance you want to take?" she challenged.

He tapped his chin as though pretending to weigh the question in his head. "Yes," he said.

"You're disgusting," Maarit scoffed.

"You're so mean to me. My non-existent feelings are hurt."

A thought suddenly dawned on Maarit; whatever he was saying no longer mattered, because Theodoracius had only been the king of Bonvalet for a number of days. There had been a king before him. These servants had had a reality before the darkness had ever ensued, and Maarit needed to know about it.

"What did the servants do when King Tevenot was still alive, then?" she inquired, clenching her fists tightly; her fingernails dug into the tender skin of her palms. "He couldn't possibly have done this to them."

She did not expect what happened next, nor did she understand the reasoning behind it.

He laughed.

His laugh was one that could conjure nightmares. It reverberated throughout the still air before them, startling the servants from their famished trance and Picard from his chess game.

Maarit suddenly found it very difficult to look at the face of the man in front of her, so she kept the trail of words going, allowing them to flow from her lips like a river. "King Tevenot would never have done this. He was a decent man, much unlike yourself. He was a great king, a kind person, a—"

"Do you think," interrupted King Theodoracius between bouts of laughter, instantly building a dam to block her river of words, "that you know my father better than I do?" His eyes were wild with hilarity, as though she had just told the most comedic of jokes. "Oh, darling, there is so much you know not."

She cocked her head at him questioningly, frustrated that he was refusing to give her a straight answer.

"Picard!" he called to the warlock.

Picard immediately dropped his chess pieces and appeared at the king's side in an instant, awaiting orders.

King Theodoracius, still smiling sadistically, spoke to him, glancing at Maarit from the corner of his eyes. "Give Maarit a tour of the castle," he said. "She will be staying here for a while. She should know some of the secrets held in this building and may find them scattered about... if she looks carefully enough."