❛the ends justify the means.❜
( part two of deadwater kings )
The board is set and Shabina chose her side. The better world she dreamed of is finally within her grasp, but she struggles when the path to victory seems to be paved in blood. The long...
"Becoming something else—a tree, a freak, a monster—preempts this pain and reduces the risk of harm. It may even, if the transformation is the right one, allow you to cause harm in return."
—Julia Armfield
*tw: gore. lots of it. beware. it's gross. like amputation and disemboweling.
i just felt like writing something horrific im sorry.
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For the record, Hadrian always thought this was a horrible idea.
He'd hated it from the moment it was suggested, and he hated it even more when everyone else voted in favor of it.
The worst part was that he couldn't even do it alone.
He leaned his elbows against the banister, looking down at the looping staircase that lined the inside of the Library's tower. He wore tattered brown clothes like most of the people walking beneath him, arms crossed. The people looked small, like ants scurrying around and collecting dirt to build their little nests. Compared to him, they were ants. That didn't mean he was alright with crushing them.
At this level, most of them were Librarians. People who dedicated their lives to knowledge in the face of a Greymark-led apocalypse.
They had declared themselves neutral in the conflicts between kings.
Hadrian's finger tapped against his arm. Slow taps, outpacing the rate of his pulse by half. He'd argued the Library's neutrality during the vote.
The others were right, though.
The Library was not neutral.
And he needed to make an example of that.
He could sense Farah far beneath him, on the ground. Her small form blended in with the humans surrounding her so that he could barely see her with the naked eye. Nothing but a splotch of black hair among many dark heads. But with magic? She burned so bright, the threads of power clustering around her body and clamoring against her iron grip. If she'd been just a bit older and stronger, Hadrian had no doubt that magic would have chosen her to be king instead.
Towards the middle of the tower waited Quin, magic still muted by quartz and ruby.
Her white-blond hair almost made him think Lin stood there. She turned her head to look up at him, green eyes assuring him that no, the huntress had not come to crash his party. Quin was the leader of a coven he'd never met until he became king. All hard edges and ambition, the woman had quickly established herself as Ilse's opposition in terms of force.
Where Ilse yielded, Quin pushed.
And Hadrian was stuck between them. Metaphorically, of course. Ilse had been so disgusted with the plan that she'd sat it out.
