My Beloved Queen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

xiv. the knight and the daughter

scapegoat
// she has accused him of a terrible crime, and she has tried him. she has judged him guilty for the faults of the gods, but the punishment she awarded him pales in comparison to that which he already bears.

————

There was a time when Isil could claim to know the designs of his princess's youngest sister. Princess Dadya was predictable, then: stubborn and loudmouthed but still bright enough to know when to toe the lines the queen drew in the sand.

She'd twittered like a bird, and her voice had been loud and harsh and immature—so brazen and bold, like a hungry, ruthless fire. She'd fought with him like a child; she'd whined and begged for his attention—sought after it as though it were a treasure, precious and rare. But her stubbornness had known bounds, and her heart had kept to its place. She had never bared such sharp teeth—had never grown any with which to snarl—but now she was biting hands and fingers and flesh, sinking fresh fangs into skin and drawing blood as red as her finest velvet dress. And the blood stained; it pressed into the space behind the heart and sunk its savage color into the flesh of the tongue, and the taste it left in his mouth was sour and bitter and dark.

It was a familiar taste—a haunting taste. It brought to mind terrible memories—terrible promises, to gods and men. To a father, poor and broken and hopeful. Painfully hopeful.

Isil stepped along faster. He moved with alacrity—with a desperate speed, hurrying along through the halls as though it was his soul he chased and not a spoiled princess too pigheaded to know when to keep her loud mouth shut.

She would suffer for her mistake—for infringing upon the queen's authority as she had.

Isil knew what came of princesses who went against the queen's wishes, and he didn't need to bear witness to what became of another's hopeless desires. He didn't need to know how the stubborn and loyal and honest Princess Dadya would grow once the queen had trimmed her—had curtailed her unsavory behavior and distasteful dreams. He didn't need to know if she would cry—if her smiles would fade or if her eyes would grow dull and careful and distant.

He didn't want to know.

He never had.

Isil came upon the door to Princess Dadya's chambers, and his footsteps echoed in a hallway unusually empty. The guard that should've been standing outside the door to the princess's room was missing, and the desolate hallway languished his absence—his blatant, infuriating incompetence.

A fiery sensation, dim-colored and hot, flared to life in the space just beneath Isil's collarbone. He felt the heat move to buzz in the pads of his fingers and hum in the roots of his teeth, and its taste mixed with the bitterness that already coated his tongue.

Whoever had thought it proper to abandon their duties to the crown while a stranger took residence in the castle would soon come to regret their myopic rationale. That, Isil would gladly ascertain.

There was no excuse for ineptitude.

The sound of his knuckles rapping against the princess's chamber door echoed hollowly in his ears—empty, like the hallway he stood in. The buzzing in his teeth stuttered, and the heat dancing atop the tip of his tongue retreated to the back of his throat to mingle with the thoughts rattling in his chest.

"Princess Dadya," Isil began. The hum of his voice was dull when he spoke; the taste in his mouth had begun to sour, and the bitterness crept into the glare he fixed upon the door. "Kindly open the door."