Final Chapter: Bound by Betrayal

“I am aware of course that I do not have the resources to ensure you stay in exile, Marseir,” Aya calmly informed her former liege as she escorted him at knife point down to the city docks. “That’s why I had a nice long chat with Marquis Razier, and he agreed to pen an official writ of exile co-signed by Queen Clara and spread your name and image through every town in the entire Serkos Union. If you set foot within these borders again, or within the nation of Arakesh, I will receive word of it, and I will come to kill you.”

“You are a treacherous whore, corrupting my daughter,” he accused, and Aya opened a stinging line of red right on his cheek.

“And now you will have a most noticeable scar to further give away your identity. Shall I add an eye-patch to that?” She hovered her knife point most suggestible over his right eye, but the black-hearted conspirator still continued his denouncements.

“I meant in truth that I should have never brought you into our home. I should have had you trained in a whore house, for that is your life’s goal, is it not? To be taken into a harem. You think I do not know that you were seen in that cad, Kareem’s rooms, right before he and Charlotte’s wedding? You slept with him the very first night I brought you onto that ship, now didn’t you? Now you will go with them selfishly back to Arakesh, instead of keeping guard over me as is the only prudent and proper insurance that I remain in exile. You think the three of you will be happy, but you will not. You are destroying my Charlotte. You have already destroyed her, my precious little girl--”

“Your precious little girl has grown up into a capable genius of an adult who can make her own decisions,” Aya snapped. “She does not need you standing guard over her, and she does not need me either. I am not giving myself to Kareem, but no, I am not wasting the rest of my life suffering your company either. You will stay in exile, Marseir, or you will die, and even if you somehow survive sneaking your way in stalkerish pursuit of your daughter, any action you take will come at the cost of Charlotte’s happiness.”

She shoved him up the gangplank and into the hands of the waiting Arakesh guards who would take him sailing far to the north and stay on to watch him ever after. “I gave you everything, and this is how you repay me!” Marseir shouted back at her in snarling accusation. “I treated you like a daughter!”

“And I thought of you like a father, for a time,” she offered in sad response, and the cruel light in his eyes fractured with genuine pain. “But a proper father never would have said such awful, degrading insults when speaking of his daughter, now would he have?” She turned her back without another word and set off toward another ship, a simple fishing vessel docked father up the pier.

She had bartered passage on this vessel to take her out of Stalis. She could not bear to remain within this country any longer under the rule of conniving Queen Clara and her soon to be new husband, Prince Carnen. Aya had heard the whispers in the halls just earlier that day, that the queen had already taken her step-son into her chambers, a perfect replacement for her dead husband. Aya had a strong suspicion in fact, after gathering intel about the time and manner of his death, that Clara had been the one to poison Yuri. Carnen would never know the truth of that though, because framing Aya for that crime was an all too clever and believable ruse. Even Marquis Razier still thought Aya had been the one to poison Yuri Gristhm. Though he did not hold it against her really, since Yuri had not been her king. He had been their enemy, and she had done a service to this country by removing him. Still, Razier had urged Aya to put herself into exile just like her duke. Then the Arakesh leader would not need to punish her for such crimes or break the newfound peace with the north, so Aya was going right along with that suggestion.

She could not go with Charlotte after all. Even if she did nothing but post herself in that foreign palace as one of her friend’s guards, Kareem would not give up his obsession with bedding her as his second Charlotte. No matter what Aya did, or how many times she refused him, she would keep drawing the lustful fool’s eye and his constant advances, making Charlotte sad and envious and forcing her to compete for his attention. Aya most firmly rejected that future. The best thing for her really was to just disappear. Then Kareem would forget about her in time and sate himself with the prize right in front of him.

Aya had lived a long enough stretch of her life already with nothing but Charlotte to give her purpose. She needed to discover her own path. She needed something of her own.

She paid the fishermen their gold, and they escorted her to the cozy, insulated cabin on the aft deck where she could rest during the voyage. She had not even closed the door yet when the sailors started shrieking in dismay and some attacker hurled their captain away from the wheel and clear across the deck. Aya whipped out her knives and stormed out to confront their assailant.

It was Carnen Gristhm, stood right at the side of the deck with broadsword in hand. This ship was already pulling away from the pier, heading out on the outgoing tide, but he must have caught hold of one of the raising anchor lines and pulled himself up.

He had seen Aya board, and he had come here to kill her, Aya could see it in his eyes. “Do stop abusing the poor sailors then,” she prompted him. “It’s me you want right? Even though I did not kill your father.”

“Like that matters,” he snapped, and she arched an eyebrow. “You think you just get to run away? Escape all punishment.”

“I deserve no punishment. I was just following orders,” she reminded him firmly, done with feeling pity for him and taking his abuse.

“No, you defied all orders.” Her brow furrowed in puzzlement, and he swung for her head. “You were ordered to kill me. You saved my life.”

“You’re welcome?” she offered in confusion, dodging backward to avoid another of his ferocious slashes about to lay open her stomach.

She stumbled on a bit of tangled rope, and he got his hand around her wrist, yanking her against him with blade level at her neck. “You did kill my brother though.”

“Again, orders,” she defended, her own blade poised right against his jugular. “Though he deserved it.”

“I thought you were sorry.”

“I am. I’m sorry for you. He still deserved it.”

Carnen growled in rage and hurled her back into the cabin. She rolled right to her feet, and he came stalking in after her, slamming shut the door. “I think we need some privacy to discuss this.”

“Is that what we’re doing? Discussing?” she demanded, crouched at the ready with long-knives in hand.

Carnen set aside his sword, jabbing it point down in the deck, so deep that it stayed there, quivering and upright. Aya gave a little grin. “That’s a risk to hull integrity.”

“We’re two floors up. It won’t spring a leak. And I was thinking, just now, I don’t want to cut you open. I want to kill you with my bare hands.”

“Bad strategy. I’d gut you like a fish,” she warned, and he stalked right up to her, looming over her in heart-pounding proximity.

“Would you?” he challenged. “I thought you could not bear the thought of killing me,” he mocked in an infuriating parrot of her voice.

“I also cannot bear to have my neck broken, no offense,” she offered glibly. “That’s why I am running away from Clara’s ordered hanging.”

“Running where exactly?” he demanded, and she faltered, straightening slightly with knives dipping down toward her sides.

“I don’t know. Just… away. I’m leaving Stalis, and I’m never coming back.”

“Why? Your country is finally free of the evil invader who killed the true royals.”

“It’s not my country,” she murmured. “It’s Marseir’s. It will always be Marseir’s, and we will never be free of all the bloodshed and scheming.”

“I thought you lived for that thrill.”

“It’s thrilling only when it’s playful,” she muttered, transfixed by the intensity of his piercing pale eyes, so bright with hate. “Now are you here to kill me or not?”

“I don’t know,” he offered, stepping back a pace, and she felt her heart skip in bitter disappointment that he had not grabbed hold of her instead. “I was headed to the docks, to barter my own passage out of this godforsaken country with all its lying treaties…” He shook his head in disbelief, eyes breaking free of her finally as they raised to the heavens in resentful retrospection. “You people set me up twice to marry Charlotte, only for my bride to turn to treachery and desert me both times, ending with my own step mother killing her husband…” He swallowed, and his eyes were suddenly so open and pained.

“I’m sorry,” Aya offered. “I didn’t think Clara would have told you that.”

“She practically bragged of it.” He ground his teeth. “She feels nothing at all for her former husband, and she wanted to take me as her new political piece. Over and over again, I keep getting turned into this bargaining chip, as if these lying, pointless marriages could ever settle anything. As my father would say,” He fingered the hilt of his sword, eyes lit with such murderous intent once again. “peace can only be kept through fear and force.”

“Doesn’t matter what way you try to force it, there will not be peace,” Aya muttered. “Not in this land. Marseir will bide his time for years and keep working to sabotage Clara, paint her son as an illegitimate heir…” She shook her head. “It’s not my problem though.” She had posted careful eyes over Charlotte and left her friend the means to contact her if ever she needed Aya’s aid, but she was done getting tied up in politics.

“I refuse to let it be mine,” Carnen muttered. “We should have never come to this country.”

“You should have conquered some other nation?” she retorted dryly.

“No, we should have stayed home.”

“I never had a home in truth,” she whispered. “I was always just a tolerated guest in that manor, a servant.”

“Living in the shadow for yet another day,” he murmured absentmindedly.

“Hoping that the monster will eat some other prey,” she finished his quote, and he exhaled, leaning back against the wall.

“You have a good memory. One night of riffling through my possessions a week past, and you can still recite those poems line by line. I suppose you find them perfect fodder for your mockery.”

“I wasn’t trying to memorize them. They just stuck there in my head,” she admitted, “made me feel like I was seeing you, really seeing you for the first time. You think I fell in love with just your face?”

His hands clenched. “How can you still be saying that?”

“Saying what? That I love you?” She paused. “I don’t know if I do to be honest. But that I fell for you, fell hard and uncontrollably… Well that’s just a fact--”

He shoved her up against the wall, and her knife was back up in instant, point hovered right over his heart.

“Then take me right now,” he demanded, breath hot upon her face. “Let me take you.”

“You hate me,” she reminded him numbly.

“I despise you. I want you. I need you.” He had already ripped open her shirt, and she did nothing to stop him. She let him pin her dagger hand right up against the wall, and she tore at his own clothing and could not even slide down his pants fully before he thrust his way inside her.

The pain was explosive, setting her alight.

He threw her to the floor, and she ripped her nails into his back, and dug her teeth into his flesh and unleashed such primal, mewling cries that it was going to leave her hoarse for days. She would not be able to walk straight for days, as they went at it long and hard, again and again, right on the wood of the deck.

Every ache and bruise felt pleasurable as the softest caress. He tasted every inch of her, and that tongue knew its work so much better than Kareem’s clumsy fingers.

They lay in a tangle of shivering and sweat-drenched limbs in the darkest hours of the night, too exhausted to do anything further. The ship had long since set out to sea, and the gentle rocking of the waves was carrying them away, far to the west.

“Stay with me forever,” Carnen breathed, keeping those muscled arms wrapped tight around her body. “Show me everything about you, every memory, every secret.”

“I will,” she swore, and she would know him just as intimately. The assassin and her prince had been made for one another, made to lock together like this and to sate each other’s hunger as no one else was able, as a part of her had known from that very first day he abducted her.

The End.