Ellie, Mary, Henry (3)
Only Ellie knew her father's final words.
It had been an ordinary day—Ellie sitting by his bedside as always, reading aloud—when his eyes opened.
"Oh! Father, you're awake!"
It had been so long since he had last opened them. Usually he would manage only the faintest smile for her before drifting off again. Today was different.
"El… Ellie…"
He parted his lips and spoke, however faintly.
Ellie felt something settle over her. She stayed perfectly still and listened.
"My beloved… my pretty daughter. My good, pretty girl…"
"Yes, Father. I'm right here."
She took his hand and held it tight.
"Run… from this place. If… if there is a god—"
He broke into a fit of coughing.
"If there is a god, He will guide you. To a bright, happy fate."
That was the last sound that left him. No more voice came. There had been more he wanted to say—I'm sorry. I love you—but Ellie seemed to have heard it all the same. She forced a smile and answered for him.
"I love you too, Papa."
Yes. My good daughter, after all.
Leopold closed his eyes.
Mary watched her mother being taken.
For the record, it was not her father doing the taking. It was the lord of the territory where they lived.
"Don't move."
Mary and her father knelt side by side. A single guardsman kept watch over them.
Mary trembled from head to toe.
Rage? Fear? Grief?
No. None of those made her body shake.
It was craving.
Ah. So that is power.
Power enough to grind a mother as proud as mine into the dirt. Power enough to keep a father who loves her more than life itself from even lifting a hand.
It was not because the lord himself was strong. A man that soft and overfed could have been killed by her mother alone—her broad-shouldered father would have made even shorter work of him. What stopped them was the guard at the lord's back. No: what stopped them was power itself.
Mary wanted that power so badly she could taste it.
Maybe that was the day I went mad.
A self-mocking smile touched her lips.
After that day an evil god chose her. It had come because it saw her craving, or so it claimed. In return she received the 72 Black Magic Spells and became a witch.
Everything after that moved like water downhill. The commoner Mary used magic to seduce a king, became queen, then the true ruler who held the regency.
Mornings full of maids waiting on her every breath. Cooks who produced any dish she named. A bed so thickly gilded and soft it swallowed her whole.
With power in her hands, Mary's life was blissfully, perfectly… not happy.
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
"This year's harvest has failed. The people have not even bread to eat. What do you propose we do?"
"If they have no bread, why not eat cake, Your Majesty?"
You absolute idiot. Both are made of flour.
"Your Majesty! Let us march on the Empire at once!"
"What nonsense is that? The Empire is three times our strength. It is impossible."
"Nothing is impossible for me!"
Why isn't it? Please, for the love of everything, stop talking.
"Your Majesty, there are rumors of ghosts roaming the palace every night. I beg you—resolve the matter with cannon fire!"
Those are my ghosts. And what lunatic fires cannons inside a palace—
—my head is spinning.
Mary's temples throbbed. Was the pinnacle of power supposed to be this much of a nightmare?
"Yes, yes! The die is cast! Ready the entire army for the Empire!"
"To the Empire!"
"Silence!"
Mary's shout finally stilled the ministers.
"Council is adjourned for today. All of you, withdraw."
"Then the war…"
"What war? Get out of my sight!"
Once every last official had been driven from the audience chamber, Mary let out a long, exhausted breath.
Every single day was hard. Ministers who never stopped screaming for war. They did not actually want a war. Their real goal was to torment her.
Damn that word, legitimacy.
Mary had none. Not a single drop of royal blood, and a commoner on top of it. The moment the nobles got bored they whispered about putting Elizabeth on the throne instead.
Magic had its limits. She could keep the high nobles under her thrall and hold power that way, but it grated on her nerves. The lower nobles who escaped the spell still rebelled every day, chanting for war simply to make her life miserable. And if she ever actually shouted, "Fine, war it is!"—
"The king has gone mad!"
The kingdom's favorite proverb ran: When the king goes mad, he declares war on the Empire. Exactly as the saying predicted, they would brand her a lunatic and try to depose her.
A knock sounded.
"What is it? Did I not tell everyone to leave?"
She snapped at the minister who opened the audience-chamber doors. He only bowed lower.
"Forgive me, Your Majesty, but the matter is too urgent."
He held out a letter. The seal of Vargas was pressed into the wax.
Vargas? What do those pirate scum want?
They raided the coast whenever they felt like it. Why send a letter? Another ransom demand after a kidnapping? The treasury was already stretched thin.
She opened it without hope—and froze at the contents.
Marriage… to me? From the young master of Vargas?
Why?
She blinked hard and read it again. Same words. It made no sense. What possible benefit could an alliance with the Lancart Kingdom give Vargas? None that she could see.
Then a thought slid through her mind.
"Princess Elizabeth visited the Vargas Duchy, did she not?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Elizabeth had fled, been caught in the Vargas Duchy, and been sent home. Couldn't even run away properly—pathetic. The princess was a fool, but her face was pretty enough.
Mary could already guess how the pieces fit.
The young master of Vargas must have fallen for Elizabeth.
And the proposal meant for her had somehow landed on Mary's desk instead.
Could someone really mix up the recipient? It seemed the only possible explanation. He couldn't actually like her. They had never met, and even if he had seen a portrait—
What would anyone see in an auntie like me?
Another minister came running in.
"Your Majesty! A second letter has arrived from Vargas."
This one said the young master of Vargas would come in person.
Of course. The first letter had been a mistake; he was coming to apologize for the discourtesy. After the apology he would propose to Elizabeth properly.
This was a chance. An enormous chance.
What if she stole him before he could propose to Elizabeth? What if she became the young master of Vargas's fiancée?
Mary felt her whole body start to tremble again.
Yes. The reason every day had been so hard was not that the summit of power was boring. It was that she still did not have enough of it.
If the young master of Vargas belonged to her—if she enchanted him with magic and married him—who would dare oppose her rule? The pirate army of Vargas, infamous for its ruthlessness, would be on her side.
"Hah… haah…"
Her breathing roughened. Just imagining that power made something deep inside her itch and flutter.
No time to waste.
Mary left the audience chamber, returned to her private rooms, and summoned the head maid.
"Head maid. Prepare two pure virgins. Immediately."
"Yes, Mistress."
She would need every preparation in place if the magic was to work. It was not the sort of spell that answered a casual flick of the wrist like some fairy-tale charm.
She built an altar, poured out every drop of blood from the two maids, added gold, salt, and platinum, and prepared to chant—
Wait. Was it three pure virgins?
Now that she thought about it, the materials for a charm of fascination required three.
"Tch."
In her haste she added a little of her own blood and began the chant: a wicked prayer offered to the evil god. The flowers around her rotted simply from hearing the words. Blood and materials fused into a single jewel.
If I shine this on him, the magic will take hold.
She strung the jewel on a chain, hung it around her neck, and returned to the audience chamber. Preparing the spell had taken so long that an entire day had slipped away. The young master of Vargas would be arriving any moment.
She waited. At last the chamberlain approached.
"The young master of Vargas has arrived, Your Majesty."
Good. He was here.
The doors of the audience chamber opened and a man walked in.
He was not as brutish-looking as she had expected. Given the rumors she had braced herself for something terrifying; the reality was different. Jet-black hair, a solid frame. The sleeves of his coat could not hide the thick muscle of his forearms or the lattice of scars. And his face—honestly, she liked it a great deal.
This is no time for that.
She addressed the man who had entered first.
"Are you the one who proposed marriage to me?"
Of course he wasn't. He had proposed to Elizabeth. But if she made him say yes here, that would be enough. Mary stroked the necklace, ready to cast—
"Of course. I will love you for the rest of my life. Marry me."
A decisive answer.
She had not even cast the spell yet…?
Without a single word of magic, Henry answered her like that. He would love her for the rest of his life—his entire life.
Under the intensity of the gaze fixed on her, Mary's own voice came out strangely unsteady.
"…Very well. I accept your proposal."
Yes. She had intended to marry him anyway. She could not allow him to marry Elizabeth. If Elizabeth bore a son, that child would become the greatest threat to her throne.
Mary accepted the proposal for perfectly rational, thoroughly rational reasons.