Chapter Twelve, Captivity

Dirgenval 27th 19 AD, Windhand Tower

Corinna stood at the verge of her window where newly fitted bars forbid her from taking flight from the tower. The thorny breeze circling the Hold circumscribed her. Mountain breath held her tight, tussling black locks grazing the precipice. The claws of Winter’s burial bore the river below and covered the range in dreary snows. Gray-white draped over the world as Malderath’s coveting of her sister’s earthly garden. Seasons were turning yet the world seemed on the brink of one final dusk with no sunrise. The pallid crust along the aperture froze her glance from behind the precarious edge, looking over jagged crags awaiting any fall into their depths. Emptiness enshrouds her. A hurting hollowness became her. What but these bars could stall her plunge? What choice was left her save fatal one, even if it must be by other means?

The billows bracing her captured sill brought no salvation. In her heart she invoked the gods’ grace, pouring her prayers upward into the atmosphere in hopes to be heard and weighed worthy of redemption from this cruel fate. There were bruises still on her cheeks from where the malice of Mordaunt’s men had marked her. Brandings from greaves at her initial refusal and being wrenched from her shelter. Rather than abate them by alchemical ointment Corinna let swell the signs of her despondency, in part hoping that the Fates or their rulers might be swayed by her state – though largely no soul saw her, save the occasional intrusion of her war-aggrieved warden.

Silence met her plea unto the heavens. The bars of her tower cell remained unbent. The skies blacken their gathering shrouds of apocalyptic proportion. Her tears fell into the gulf below, her pain ignored by any higher power in the universe. With a despondent sigh she stepped back to grab her chalice from the table. Her fingers anxiously traced the rim of the potion, as though she could feel the lethal essence simmering up by nearness to her skin. Through her stained lids the bleak glow of the welkin winked as she raised the contents to the corner of her lips’ purse. Thank you, Azarra. You of all people, who have sought my end the most, hath brought me deliverance. Bought my passage from this ugly world.

Echoes from Mordaunt shivered in her skull. Her host’s threats blown by belligerent trumpets blaring their supremacy. “Drakkon is dead. Now Baron too is buried. You hath nowhere else to call a hearth, none left to turn to… No one, that is, besides me. Through this I free you. Every tribe will soon anoint my claim and cement our union. We will rain good fortune unto our subjects through our bonded power showered. Already the masses assemble, like birds of carrion, to pick at the wretched corpse of the old regime – your husband a mere shadow in the wake of my will. I am the only voice left to vouch for you. My offer is of mercy, not pain.”

Sickening disgrace roiled about in the grimy base of her gut. Stirred by active remembrance of being played the pawn in Mordaunt’s power grab. What else could she stomach but poison? When her innards were so corroded by this rot, being naught but an imprisoned tool. She could not shake the sense that she’d sold her pride and the people’s future for a meager more days; precious time for a life that held no real hope or meaning remaining. Corinna suspected that her suitor would dispose of her the moment the marriage pact had served its purpose to acclaim his crown. But playing the fool to his demands still seemed the only way of ensuring the livelihood of her Grove – her truest family, united by nature & sisterhood. If she could even earn them that.

It proved too difficult to delude herself that any dignity, power & freedom was left for her. Even when her captor wasn’t here, in the castle, his savage sentinels saw to her ‘safety’. She’d been allowed some respite, with all her new lord’s work keeping him so frequently about, trying to rally frail reins. Yet even when absent, his presence still oppresses, seeps through every pore of the Hold. His sweat constricts her lungs, stifles the scream she badly seeks to obey for small & sharp catharsis. Stinging to be so lacking in sovereignty. Just a key to another’s puzzle, a piece to portrait of power that would never again be wholly hers. Lashed and laid bare as little more than another conquest. & how she damned herself for wasting that prior power.

Despondently Corinna brought the glass, this “parting gift” from the High Mother delivered by Delphine, up. The deep shade as brilliant crimson as its courier’s mane and as venomous as Azarra’s curse against her. Before she sipped the fatal draught, a sudden notion tickled the back of her spine. From bone to brain stew, it flared promise through her synapses that Baron was not truly slain, nor Drakkon grounded to a barrow. That the burning augury simmered for their paths to soon cross and kindle all once more. But doubt lined this vision. Not only feeling that the spirits abandoned her to desolation, but a grief beset upon her. Telling of the torturous terror she held for the man who’d made her empress and shackled her to pedestal. No liberator could save this bondwoman, encased within her worldly vessel.

This disparaging stream of consciousness was interrupted by the clamor of the tower door opening and Mordaunt’s voice drumming heavy on her ears. “Ah, how fairs my betrothed? I bring gifts as tributes to our coming union: a rich harvest from Evyrheath! Forgive my absence, tis a tiring & thankless task of reining in power… Yet we can count two more former lord’s fyrds among our force-”

Corinna welcomed him with spiteful spasm. “Is not power its own reward & thanks for thee?”

“Nay! Power without purpose is its own prison. A leash to tether you to an early grave. Or the rot we saw your former husband become.” He shifted not from her insult. “I’d prayed to find you more pleased with the coming ceremony than before, but are you not? I trust I need not remind you of what is at stake should this circle of marriage be suddenly broke.”

Mordaunt continued. “Have I not shown stoicism & strategy well enough in waiting for the hour when faith in our lost lord waned to revive our core with renewed strength? Do you not wish to see a world where we can see that peace persevere after show of iron and let the veins of our imperium’s virtue be tapped by the masses, simply because the view must be at my side?”

“I wish not to be the plaything of another aspiring tyrant!” Shot Corinna, chastising this silvery prison about her and caring not for reprisal from this limping scourge before her. “Not be chained to one who claims the blood of those who have been husband and lover to me.”

“How curious that your ‘husband’ and ‘lover’ are not the same. Ah, but I do not come to scold thee. As there are virtues you yet sup.” Mordaunt hid his burgeoning frown behind manner of cool fact. “Drakkon’s madness made it a must for him to relent the crown. And your bard had not the steel to truly rule and wield a vision of betterment for the people with an actual spine. He had to be hunted like the carnal creature he carved of himself. Yet you are shrouded by grace and opportunity still.”

Though his gait limped, his back bent lower – made crooked by the weight of that black fang which oft hung there – Mordaunt yet stalked & hovered with aspect of unyielding ambition, an absorbing vanity guarded by thinly cordial presentation. “I know the prospect may not fill you with glee but even beyond your coven, only you are attuned to the hearts of the people. As they delight in your reign to remove you would rattle their hearts with strife. Make them pregnant with more malice than ever before.”

Mordaunt’s hunger hung from his tongue. “But you can tame them. Let our hand abolish false gods and petty masters. Help restore sanity and Order to the land. No longer will Imperium be encumbered by tethers to dead ages. Nor suffer the veiny heads of bloated hierarchs, be they miserly magistrates, rabid revolutionaries, or ‘incarnate’ emperors.”

“It seems to suffer evermore so.” The captive chose not to mask her somber sigh. “Are you not but another master for the unheard herd? Another ‘shepherd’ with a harsh hand? How is this increase in strife you offer as alternative supposed to send us swifter to whatever ends you plan for?”

“This realm is awoken. Arisen through strife, by a knock in the night. Given the chance to extend beyond its former boundaries. No longer to suffer the plagues of the wilderness and the rot of a civilization grown stagnant. People shall not suffocate under the veil of ignorance, the drapery of deceit. They will no longer prostrate themselves before idols of dubious deities. But as messy as this mission is I assure thee: I am no ignoble beast ready to slate my appetite on the livers of the humble folk. Nay! My reign will be conducive to peace and prosperity within. I only need the support of your promise in regal courtship.”

“Again, I hope you have fully considered the promise given of a rejuvenated life span, perpetual luxury of nobility and the pedestal needed to secure the lives of your followers. The road ahead need not be dark if you allow me to lighten your burdens with truth.” His tone: a windy whisper harrying a bleak confidence. The solitary & somber beauty of this northern clime and this hearth-less hold illumed to her his more ungainly features. “Let me remind my imminent bride that I require only her hand. It would not be the first time either of us hath found our duty in loveless marriage. Consider the cost of forgoing this bridle.”

Corinna slid back towards the window ledge. Utter desolation of mind on her withered expression, haunted by existence. In that moment she readied her soul for the bleak scythe of mortality, choosing the threat of annihilation over a live subservient to Mordaunt. But the trail of her thoughts was interrupted by her captor’s forceful grasp which reeled Corinna down from the steps and brought her to face his icy stare. “Might we discuss this along the walls, for a walk?”

“You think to toss me from there? Or sick the ‘chivalrous’ wretches among the helots upon me in the open air? Would prove an amusingly infantile attempt if so.”

“& defy Order & Peace for selfish sorrows? Do you not know the woman you wish to wed as wiser than that? Nay, as much as I loathe this leash you grant me, the fiends among your fyrds would prove e’ermore barbaric. I merely wish to see the skies, bare, beyond mocking bars.”

“Ah, but that leash is so becoming of you. A woman’s wiles can be ever so capricious. More so when her wit is sharp & her heart stabbed with senseless sorrow. Ha, I jest! Yet know that I do fear for your happiness, in this rueful cage you’ve cast yourself into. None of us in this castle seek to see you harmed, hence the bars & lack of steep instruments. I worry you do not yet see your worth! Shirking my side so! Ducking the duty of your destiny yet living!”

The hostage empress refused to bend & shrink before the gruff-faced man’s scrutiny but instead stabbed at him with her wit. “If Drakkon is truly gone, then would not the throne he sat upon be shown to be as mortal & frail in its authority as he? Would you not be usurping a barren kingdom of lies? What will claiming of one widow change in this? Without that Living Light there would be no right, no claim, to shine forth and the realm would be prey to hungry shadows. Do you assume the masses will consent to this overt deceit?”

For once during this talk Mordaunt’s cool expression cracked into deep disturbance. Yet his voice remained incessant in strongminded delivery & tenor. “He hath ‘Ascended’ then and left me as his Successor. A new Lord anointed by the blood of holy war and given Stewardship of his Creation. To be blessed by union with the Goddess… I could rule without your consent in this. Ah, but I would rather you and your stubborn sect live on. Think, my Lady, would you truly wish to hold the guilt-laden weight of their slaughter on your shoulders? I know the rougher roads I could travel, how to wield real will in action. But bloody murder is so unbecoming these days I feel. & I have already bled so much for them. Yet the people are already accepting of their fate, in being removed of their fallen - or ascendant imperator - at least.”

His insinuation did not sunder her armor, for Corinna cast her caution into the wind. “Tis you who would be paraded as a charlatan and a heretical thief. The heath folk and high courts alike should not bow to you. ‘Twould be fitting for the people to rise in wrath and burn your bones to cinders as punishment for your self-serving scheme. Hmph. Why must you insist on my being chained to you? Am I truly your only channel to deification?”

Mordaunt heard well her interjection but showed no heed of it. He pushed forward, wrapped his firm grip about her waist and led Corinna from the chamber out to the battlements. “Perhaps a taste of air shall indeed suit you. Let us hear the blessings on the wind and look upon our lands. Let me paint you a portrait of my plan.”

Corinna would’ve been content to leave the stiflingly elaborate cell, were it not for the presence of her captor constricting her breath. A silent servant ushered them beyond the door to be then dismissed by Mordaunt, closing it behind them himself as they walked along the embankment. She managed to grab the bottle and another glass before letting him command her from the room and gently offering it to him. “I shall toast to it, if you might sway me!” Her visage feigned fright and desperation, though inwardly she set her feet firm to stand her ground, even if it meant facing oblivion’s fangs.

Mordaunt held the rim high but stalled his sip. Looking over the battlements, a proud remembrance gleaming in his sight, reflecting on how high he climbed. “The realm will be a stronger, safer place if you concede to this. Together we can sow seeds of cohesion that will surpass the realms of old in abundance of learning & of- “

“-and of war.” Corinna brazenly interrupted. “For your passion is war is it not, Mordaunt? That is what has brought you so close to a crown. You are a man ruled by bloodlust and endless appetite. How will all this suffice for so vain a lord? I see no silver recompense to your blunt offer.”

“How spurned I am by your distrust! Never have I been granted a second of your time, my words never given the warrant reception of your ear-” Mordaunt shifted his poise from diplomatic restraint to reel her close. “You think me a monster when all that have ever aimed for is the good of the ideal and the true strength of people’s potential. I seek this prestige only that I may wield the torch to guide a better future for the realm. War is the sacrifice, the blood before the altar of the gods’ who sit high in Judgement of our deeds. Within war there lies the flame of rebirth. Nothing meaningful in this world may be attained without first being forfeit to the gauntlet.”

Corinna held his gaze, doubtful of her captor’s intentions. She gently pushed back his hand from her waist and glided over to the wine, now sitting on the ledge, to fill another goblet. Swirling about with grace in her aura she presented it to Mordaunt. With a raise of her glass, gesturing him in cautious welcome. She gave cheers to their tragic departure soon to follow the toast. “Never have you given me a reason to trust you. You are a thrall to instinct of primal bloodlust. Serving different masters, yet never holding them in your heart; a cause clouded and veiled by valor. A man who seizes his desires with rampant impulse will always be hollow in his promise & elusive in loyalty. I saw through your ruse. No doubt that is why you schemed this all up.”

Gazing to the firmament, the bite of winter ate through her bones. The world was hollow. The wind brought no gust of deliverance, no whispers from the spirits of salvation. Only the cold grip of emptiness. It felt as though frost had curled about her heart and any gods or devils, she ever could’ve invoked vanished into the void. “You know, Corinna, contrary to what the sages assert, Destiny is not a scroll etched in the stars and pre-ordained to play out scripted by our mortal lives. I believe – or rather, I know – that Destiny is a malleable force sculpted by Will. Carved from the marble we’ve been given. Drakkon ascended to “Divinity’, even worshipped postmortem, by consolidating this potential. He had a vision to defeat the Vizzar and triumphed, but his fate was not to rule forever. For his Will was misguided & the wind blew for me when he would not listen. I carry that vision of a better world; I am its pallbearer. The herald of a dream.”

“& where is my Will in this? Where is that of the commonfolk? Your dream seems to differ only in its centerpiece being you. But I wish them to have reason for faith, a truer dream.”

“We are already bonded, you and I. In wanting and actively working to make this life better. And not solely for ourselves and our slight circumstance but for a purpose bearing real grandeur. Just as you have your sisters & sons in the coven, I have my warriors as accompaniment. Warriors who have cornered Baron to a pit in the south. Leaving you no course save mine.”

Corinna caught his slip up, his lie which unmasked some small hope in her. “Before you claimed that Baron is slain. Yet now he is ‘cornered’ but living to spite thee?” Perhaps, she wondered for pensive flash, if her poet lived how he may yet offer escape from this fate. Yet if he arrived, would it not be too late, having supped of a slow death already. Unless her regiment diet of semi-poisonous bloom - effused into the potions to quiet her shaking spells - might help her resist the creeping toxin, if it should be a cousin of that sleepy branch imbued in Azarra’s spirits. Or else this potion was brewed of the same serpent which kissed its giver, gifting only mortality.

Mordaunt swallowed a scoff through a sip of her wine. “That skald is a cunning fox but a limping one that can no longer leap from my aim! He flees in shambled steps, pursued by my hunters. He cannot move to meet us at the Summit and certainly not visit us here with my host of arms. He is unable to so much as stroll outside his petty hole as the Winter of his cause starves him out. Ah, but won’t you put him behind and embrace the beginning of our Spring?”

“Yet you seem to fear him enough to lie about his welfare?” Corinna curled her lip with poking phrase. “Hmm, humor my capricious curiosity: Which of these contenders to my heart’s court do you fear most? Who should make you shiver when returning to draw the square?”

Her captor grunted through the glass. Savoring the flavor and the chance to flank her comeuppance. “I fear neither. But if Drakkon resurfaces from his burial barrow and I must ensure he returns there, my chains to him shall be undone by force. Should this wanton path be pushed by the Fates I shall have no more need of thee thereafter. Thy hand and the rest shall no longer be held to that grace I have given. Thy use is only in thy goddess crest. As for Baron, I might say that if he swears off this stubborn suicide and pledges fealty ye may yet rejoin under more pleasant tidings. Yet should I let him live to whisper in thy ear as a nuisance?”

After a several terse strides, with each of them plotting their careful words inside their head, Mordaunt indulged further in Corinna’s drinking invitation. His suspicious assuaged by her so freely partaking of the same bottle. Already she felt the world spinning, the waves of intoxication rushing over her. Licking the herbal residue about her lips that masked the taste of poison. Mordaunt seemed impressed by the wine’s flavor, showing no signs of apprehension when next he spoke. “Ah, this is strong wine. Full blooded and passionate. How fitting for yourself… Your taste is as sharp as your wit, my sworn companion of waxing crown.”

“’Twas a gift from the Lady Azarra. Say what you want about the woman and her wicked ways, but she knows her spirits.” Corinna chuckled, shielding her nervousness.

Mordaunt did not dwell on her comment, for he followed trail of his thought. “Fate dealt me a cruel hand when I was a mere child when my kin were enslaved by Vizzari. I did not subjugate myself to their crown in spirit, instead harvesting the strength to change the fate of my tribe and free them of those foreign chains. You say that I did not hold their purpose inside my chest but rest against it, feel my beating pulse, & I would change that to admiration. Wrangling the task of balancing faith with service and patience before breaking free was difficult. Never abandoning my true purpose, cloudy as it can seem to those who are yet to truly know me.”

He sighed sadly into his swill. “Do not think I am immune to the guilt of that era. I was indeed soaked in the blood of my kin. It still seeps into me in painful drops. Turning on Malvayn was a profoundly inspired movement in my fate’s wheel that brought freedom to my tribe from the now obliterated oppressors. I ‘betrayed’ those bastards of the Vizzar, yes. Those feckless autocrats had it coming, my hand merely their deliverer. I ‘betrayed’ your emperor when he cast down the cause for vain writ. Cursed him only because of the corruption spreading beneath his crown. But never – never – have I betrayed mine own heart, my purpose.”

Only because your ‘heart’s purpose’ is a black shifting mire with no real foundation. No love inhabits that cavity in your chest. She thought to herself, scornfully. “Has your heart always included me in its purpose?” Corinna smiled, beaming as a winter sun to see Mordaunt indulge in a good amount of the wine. “Or am I only a recent addition, one added after the deed of dealing with our dictator was done and the need of me discovered?”

Corinna caught how his gaze was lost in lime of nostalgia, a lifelong climb. How that single minded purpose in Mordaunt made him vacuous to all else. “I joined with your former husband to better the fortune of my people and mine own. As many did. His promised realm offered much. & To fulfill a promise to prophecy, to a line of Fate which would one day drain me of nobility, of vigor. I fought to topple the repressive regime that coiled my birth, Vizzari. I pursued the call which I heard to triumph. I answered the summons of fate as presented. Made my actions the conduit of this willing,” continued Mordaunt. “this call to higher purpose- “

“-This call, did you hear it when you betrayed him? Were you true to your vile heart when you stole mine from this chest?” Corinna interrupted his boasting once more, wrathful skepticism along her brow and biting tone. A shudder came, feeling a greater loss for Baron than her bygone husband, steering her mast.

Mordaunt aimed to disarm her distrust with truth and prove himself nobler. “You know what he became. Long since he was to you that fresh-faced lover with the fire of the gods in his eyes. A crown of madness sat upon his head - delirium the only voice he adhered to. I only turned from Drakkon when his decisions caused our kingdom, our kin, to suffer. He let many livelihoods wilt and in my eyes his rule became all too like that of the Vizzar in scope of cruelty. The banality of evil etched into the foundation of our culture. I saw how you tried to change him, help him rein in himself but tell me wasn’t it so vain an effort? He turned from you and dwelt in darkness. Truly, the only light left to offer in this world stands before you to offer freely it’s rays!”

“All you need do to soak in that new meaning is accept the embrace. Let your virtues move me, that we might step past.” He moved boldly towards her as though a partner in a winding, bawdy dance. Although not much a man of courtship & amorous adventure there was a rising lust lathered across his lips. The lewd arch of his brow made his intent quite clear to her: seeing her as no prized woman or worthy soul but a passing reward for these steps towards his own grandeur. Leaning at her with crooked look that cast her as a plump fruit to be plucked for the pleasure of gratifying his long-laid greed. “My heart once belonged to another lady, a Goddess. She was buried in darkness. I shamed myself by hiding her from the world, which scourged her – worse for secrecy. I shall hide my need no longer.”

Mordaunt halted to press his lips to hers. But Corinna stepped up her pace, pouncing past in an unspoken censure, told clearly from her body’s language. This rebuke he swiftly addressed. “I wish to share my core and crown with one who will keep hope aflame, shine light for others. Grant me calm grace to forgive both our sins.”

When her gaze veered back to his it came with a stare, long and serrated enough, to bleed blizzards into wanton eye of her winter-keeper. “Thou hast left love long to rot. This sin of another’s abandonment cannot absolve thee through ‘grace’ of shallow matrimony. To claim this hand of mine shall lash thee to vices beyond the virtues thou seek to chain before ebbing courts.” The way Corinna clasped her suitor-captor’s mask, holding him so close to her distant sight, she caught on the snags of his soul and peeled his ambition; exiled him from present desire. “Thou hast failed to save others and thyself. What future can thou offer for us, and those still suffering from our sins, without the strength to absolve the past? Wherefore, this flailing demand for falsity?”

Mordaunt refused her enchantment of dusky doubts. Pressing back against the nihil his averse bride wrote by clasping her hands. He held them both away from his face and above her shoulders, speaking a vow to shatter hold of ice. “’Thou’ need not spindle these fears of me to tarnish truth. What is done must be decided upon, lest it fester. Do not shirk salvation for these feelings you own of me, only seeing what you deem the worst. Virtue alone is vice without action. Won’t you gaze into the stars of what force we might stir to bring stability to the surf our former foolishness churned?”

“And you suspect I will embrace you as a savior? How are you any more deserving of this fleeting pedestal propped up as a throne? Your tyranny is no deliverance from Drakkon’s mistakes. Your grievous nature will bury any hope for peace. I cannot see the mercy you claim in your eyes, only the hunger of a vulture feasting on widow’s bones and a rotten realm. Even locked in this tower I hear the world whispers of what wrack you bear upon it. Yours is a field for wolves to flourish while more precious flowers are uprooted by ceaseless marching of coin-hounds. I cannot give my heart to that of another so wrought with rancor.”

“Drakkon once had love in him,” Corinna said, swirling her wine glass and savoring the taste of the wine (relishing in Azarra’s special toxin, even if it was undetectable by her tongue), “a love that you could not begin to fathom. He was seduced by his mother’s conceit and caught in her web. But beneath the cold carapace she shaped to him there was a divine spark, a flame that burned with passion and vision. He cared for the people he ruled for until his ear was poisoned, and his kindness withered. We are not as we once were and can never again be so, this is true. Yet there was a resolve there that yet echoes in me and makes your promises mute.”

“Alas, love has blinded you. You still know not the shape of the man you married. Perhaps having been raised to such heights by his hand flooded the judgment in your pretty head.” Mordaunt downed his chalice, hoping the substance would enliven his words. She wasn’t alone in wanting to whisk away the dour clouds with sour swigs, though she was in awareness of its secret lining. “Are you so anchored to Drakkon’s shadow that you have turned your sights from the people who would suffer for your ‘romantic’, and utterly selfish, choice not to move on? What of your ‘sisters’ in that little cult you call your flock & those whose caste is the fringes of society? I have made it incredibly clear to you how your Grove would smolder in ashes and the witches of every clan made the cause of this curse and hunted down. Not be me, but them!”

“The people need order, and the structure of our dwindling Dominion must be preserved enough to be transformed. A near impossible task currently with Drakkon’s ascension and all these separatist sects and delirious cults. Made harder by so many clinging to memory as you do so fervently, refusing to accept the way forward. Without your hand to bind this union and restore ruling divinity everything we have worked to build will crumble and the spirit of the land will eat away its core.”

“And what might we provide them with? What security shall the commoners & mercantilists find in a union between a dead god’s grieving widow and his warlike steward?” She prodded.

“With the imminent eclipse superstitions wax the minds of the sprawling masses. Yet by acclaim upon that rise our Summit can seal the chaos that would otherwise descend. Our union would culminate the congealing of hearts & let the scars of infighting heal. Simply hold my hand, take what I bequeath, and we tie their superstitions to serve themselves before they need be repealed. We grant them tranquility to quell the terror before seeding the strength of mortal merit. All the same under the sun which shall bless our marriage. For their sake & the seed of all prosperous futures I wish to sow strength in them.”

Corinna stalled. Ensnared by this end, without any waking escape, rouge brushed her cheeks with anxious streak. Then a dry chuckle left the gravely pastel woman as she finished the rest of her wine. Praying in secret that the toxin making its way to her stomach would grant her a swift deliverance. She no longer cared if this ‘good-bye’ meant she would be welcomed to eternal torment in the beyond. “Forgive my laughter at your forwardness, steward. I shall rescind my initial hostility to your proposal and try to find what merit I may. Though I lack your boastfulness.”

Rueful humor rippled through her. “But that I can earn this reverence gained by small-seeming grace. Let my acceptance of the prospect be declared.” What use was there in dithering, in protracting these last hours by pain, over an argument already defeated by death. It’s not as though I’ll have to suffer the day in any case… “Only, prithee promise me this: leave the Illuminaries alone? Let those torches stand to ease the path of sovereignty to people whle we run this farce of empyrean into the ground with our inevitable foolishness. But we must try, as I shall.”

Mordaunt’s liver swished about as he jumped to hear her approval. “Ah, glad you find reason. Glad these spirits lift yours to mindful grasp. Hmm, I shall prove these ambitions not the grain of vain grandeur but inspirations of truly gained standing. If honoring the bard’s legacy by letting them learn rhyme schemes and passing poetry will please you enough to be unfettered to his fall, then let that be a fair barter!”

Her head swirled, stomach threatened to scream out the rancorous drip, but she remained standing, gracefully even. “Prithee let me ease those servants of my coven to assure them of this decision. Speak to them on the course for us all.”

“Splendid! You are as graceful in your wisdom as you are refined in your taste in wine.” He lifted his glass to cheers, intoxicated by dreams on the cusp of fruition. “We shall hold the feast I wished to celebrate. Arrangements have been made and the best foods are to be prepared that Spring blooms fresh for our taste buds. Let our feast ov ages usher end of starvation.”

“I can feel my spirit soaring in rejoice as we speak.” She let out a small stream of unwitting laughter and then a sigh. “There’s so much still to wrap my head about. I would like some time to gather my thoughts though before.” Soul soddened from the wine of nihil. Her stare, a vacant, fading glimmer.

“Very well, I shall leave you to your merit for a couple hours.” Crossing the threshold through the tower chamber – this, her prison holding her in prim, proper confines which kept Corinna chained to Mordaunt’s designs – her captor stopped in his steps for a second, as if suddenly recalling something of prime importance and spoke dryly. “When you are crowned anew, and the silver gown tailored to you adorns to awesome fit, we shall henceforth be ‘Selene’ and ‘Madrun’. The mantle of deification shall be but a passing protocol. Yet in time we might recant all divinity once the folk who flock to worship are strong enough to stand for faith in themselves. If we do not prove ourselves too human by frailty, we can show them how mortal means will allow them share in holy prosperity. Let them be as little gods in our seeded garden.”

His wine-spattered lips moved, rasping whisper over a courtly bow– a gesture Corinna glared through, unconvinced by his gentle con, sensing something monstrous still in his stare. “And fear not that I shall argue consummation before ordained by proper ceremony. Let this be a show of my growing temperance to you. I expect you shall be beautiful then, as you are now, of course.”

With that Mordaunt went downstairs to ready the feasting hall, leaving Corinna to dress and sulk. As the door closed in on her the walls caved with it. Trapped in her lonely few hours here. A darker doubt than that of death lashed her. What if this serpent’s stain has worn off? Or is not enough to carry me out? Then I must cut out a fresher threshold, should it be so!