Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 958: Throw of a dice(2)

The cold air of november gave his icy kiss to the back of the Imperator’s neck as he instead twisted his gaze to the unexpected guest.

"What are you doing here?" The second son of the War Emperor asked as the initial shock finally crystallized into cold reason.

He reached back and pulled the tent flap shut with a sharp tug, the silk hissing as it fell into place. He suddenly felt a stinging awareness of his own vulnerability as her eyes bore into his mask,while she appeared to have none as his eyes traced the delicate embroidery and curves of her robes.

"Some would find it strange for a husband and wife to sleep in separate tents," she answered his thinly veiled anxiety with a smile that was far too innocent to be true.

The response took him aback, knocking the wind out of his practiced imperial dignity. He took several long seconds to reassemble his composure, his mind racing through a list of political motives and hidden daggers, she may have had to find him here.

"I believe our circumstances would make strange what other men feel as normal," he replied, his voice a low rasp. He was working his brain, digging for whatever hidden lever she was trying to pull. Had Landoff sent her? Was this a play to remind him that he was family while Corbray was not?

"Then perhaps it would be a fine time to mend that?" She reached out and patted the space to her right, the velvet of the bed sighing under her touch. "Are you so fearful of me, husband, that you won’t even sit in my presence?Or perhaps the problem is not mine but yours?"Her eyes went lower.

He knew it was a taunt. He had visited her chambers many times in the gilded cage of the palace, the cold, obligatory visits of a man seeking an heir, but the opposite had never happened. Not once in the ten years they had been bound by law and blood had she stepped into his sanctum. And certainly not after their boy.

Ten years of shared meals, shared titles, and yet, as they stared at each other in the dim light of a campaign tent, they saw only strangers wearing familiar faces.

Suddenly, she laughed, a sharp, melodic sound that cut through the gloom of his defeat. He could seldom remember when she had lost done so.

"If you fear that your manhood is not up for the task, we may just speak. Though I must admit, I would find that quite disappointing."

The words pricked him right in his pride, the only thing he still possessed in abundance. His jaw tightened. Without a word, he unfastened the heavy clasp of his travel cloak and let it fall to the rug in a heap of dark wool. He followed it with his silken tunic, stripped down to the thin linen garment beneath, and took his seat upon the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight, bringing him into her orbit, where the scent of her perfume battled the smell of horsehide and rain that clung to his skin.

They stared at each other for a long, agonizing moment. The bed, usually a solitary island of restless sleep, had not been occupied by two people for this long without the frantic, hollow ritual of duty.

"You wished to speak, no? Then do so," Mavius stated, his voice cracking slightly before he steadied it. It wasn’t an attempt to dominate the conversation; it was simply that he had forgotten the mechanics of casual speech.

In the closest years, his tongue had only moved for war, logistics, and the intricate ploys required to dismantle his younger brother’s claim. Recent events had systematically stripped away the "good" of life, until the only pleasure he could find was the grim satisfaction of another’s pain serving his gain.

When he looked at his wife, he remembered with a start that he had even begun to lose physical sensibility. Even down there.

He would never reveal that to anyone else.

To be seen as a failure was one thing; to be seen as a man who could no longer feel would be a ridicule he could not survive.

"These last months have been incredibly boring for me, you know?" Eloir conceded with a weary sigh, her fingers tracing the patterns on her silken lap. "I have had nothing to do all day but sigh and look out the window. My ladies-in-waiting are as dull as a priest at a feast. The most stimulating conversation I have with them is whether the cook should go lighter with the salt and heavier with the pepper, which in that case was no for both."

She shifted, the rustle of the blanket the only sound in the cavernous tent. "When it was spring, I could at least watch the birds in the garden. It was nice, looking out for them." She stopped, an embarrassed smile flickering across her lips as she realized how far she had drifted. "You must find this insufferable, don’t you? Hearing of the trivial plights of a woman while you worry about the weight of empires."

In truth, he did not find it boring. He was starving for it. A sharp pang of pain settled in his chest, hitting a spot he had thought hollowed out long ago. When was the last time anyone had approached him just to speak?Once they had made lines for it , now?Where were all of them?

"I have always wondered what you did to pass the time," he lied

"Well, now you know how dreadful it is. It grew worse when autumn arrived with its chill, and the birds all flew away west. I envy them, you know? That they can leave a place as easily as beating their wings. Perhaps I would have found life better had I been born a man."

Mavius snorted, a dry, bitter chuckle escaping his throat. "I don’t know how much you’d enjoy having steel aimed at your throat. You may think you’ve learned the nature of war from your brief... presence at the Fingers, but changing a palace chamber for a castle turret does not make you a soldier. You have not once stepped where true danger could reach you."

"Well," she whispered, her eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp light, "that would give us something in common, wouldn’t it?"

The insult hit him like a physical blow. He fought the primal urge to slap the smirk right off her face, the insinuation that he, too, had fled from the "true danger" . Instead, he forced his voice to become ice.

"Why are you here?"

The coldness of his tone seemed to wound her more than a strike would have. She rose from the bed, her light clothing clinging to curves he would have once rejoiced in owning.

"’Why are you here?" she mimicked in a mocking, childish voice, her eyes beginning to shimmer with a sudden, hot anger. "’Why have you come? Why have you left the palace?’. That’s all that I have been asked by you since I came , I’ll tell you why,Oh Imperator! I was trying to make a first step toward... something. Toward us! But clearly, such work cannot be done alone. I came to see if there was a husband left inside the man,to see if another heir could be brought, but I see only a ghost sitting on a pile of dirt."

She turned away, her movements sharp and trembling with fury, and began to walk toward the exit of the tent.

As she moved, Mavius felt it, a sudden, terrifying draft. It wasn’t the wind from outside, but the cold air of absolute solitude blowing against his back, threatening to swallow him whole.

Before he could think, before his pride could stop him, his hand shot out.

He caught her wrist.

"Outside is cold," he said, the lie sounding clumsy and hollow even to his own ears.

"Heavier cloth was fashioned exactly for that," she shot back, her voice brittle. She wrenched her wrist, trying to pull away, but his grip remained firm.

He suddendly feared solitude more than slights, once more.

He knew he needed to apologize, to offer a bridge, but the words were rusted in his throat. "I admit... I have been cold to you. It was a time of war," he paused, the bitter irony of his recent flight tasting like copper, "so I could spare little thought for anything else. We have a sliver of peace in hand now. Perhaps we could still pursue what you spoke of? I would not mind it."

Eloir stopped struggling. She turned back slowly, her anger simmering down into something far more unreadable. "Then perhaps," she whispered, stepping closer until the warmth of her body pushed against the chill of the tent, "we should get ourselves bare. No more masks,for example?’’

She reached up, her fingers trhrusting forward as they touched the edge of the ornate mask he wore, the silver visage he used to hide his weariness from the world. He went still, his heart thudding a slow, heavy rhythm so loud he was sure she could hear it , but he let her do it. He didn’t pull away as she unlatched the silk ties and drew the cold metal from his skin.

Mavius braced himself. He searched her eyes, waiting for the flicker of disgust, the reflexive recoil at the sight of the haggard, broken man beneath the myth. But he found nothing but a strange, focused intensity.

"How does it feel?" she asked softly, her breath ghosting over his skin. "To have the cold air on your face once more?"

"Strange," he answered, his voice a mere thread of sound. He was taken aback by how normal this felt, how the crushing weight of the campaign seemed to retreat into the shadows of the tent.

"I... what else are we are to do?"

"Follow my lead then," she murmured.

She reached forward, her hands against his chest, pushing him back onto the bed. Before he could draw a breath, she was over him, her lips crashing against his in a kiss that tasted of all and nothing. Mavius went rigid, his mind reeling, but as she pulled back just an inch, her lips brushed his ear.

"I want another boy, Mavius," she hissed, a fierce, primal demand. "Give me another son."

She kissed him again, deeper this time. Mavius felt his heart drumming against his ribs like a trapped bird. His hands, usually so steady with a blade, moved tentatively to her face, tracing the line of her jaw.

She did the same to his blacked and warped face.Caressing him and letting them rest on his visage.

Her lips moved from his mouth to his cheek, then to his chin, trailing fire in their wake. Her hands rose, her palms gently covering his eyes, blocking out the world, blocking out the tent, leaving him in a warm, velvet darkness as she continued to kiss his face.

It was a moment of profound, impossible kindness. For the first time in years, he felt.... safe?

Her lips reached his chin and stopped. Mavius tilted his head back, his throat exposed,eyes blocked waiting for the soft touch of her mouth against his neck. The silence stretched for a long, agonizing second.

He wanted to jest about what she was waiting for.

But then came the long awaited a kiss, but it was a cold one, icier than the winds.

She uncovered her eyes.

The silver pin she so long used to fasten her hair, long, slender, now revealed itself to have been honed to a needle point- It slid into the soft tissue beneath his jaw with sickening ease.

Bleugh.

Mavius’s eyes flew open beneath her palms. He tried to gasp, but the sound was a wet, gurgling choked noise.His throat started feeling with blood, and he began to choke.

The darkness came back as she once more held his eyes shut,her impossibly flimsy liibs now seemingly that of a giant, her weight pinned him down, the needle coming out and in, out and in, out and then finally in.

He did not fight it when she covered her eyes once more.

He could see nothing, perhaps that was blessing.

He could not see her, nor her hate, nor her disgust, nor the single, shimmering tear that fell to his cheek.

But what he could no longer see, he felt through the vibration of her chest against his. All the years condensed into a whisper that cut deeper than the steel pinned down his throat. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

She leaned down, her lips brushing his cooling skin one last time, and spoke the final truth of their ten-year tragedy.

"I know."