fic: the flower of carnage (crown duel) (2/2)

[falseeeyelashes]

12.

The war has gone on long enough. The king has sent word that he plans to march on Tlanth, and Shevraeth sends for Mel’s brother under a white flag. When Bran arrives, she cries against his chest, never more relieved to see her stupid brother than she is in this moment.

The reunion is short-lived, and over the course of the next couple of days she finds herself holed up with Bran and Shevraeth, a map of the realm spread out before them, strategizing an end to this war.

The plan hinges on a sneak attack against the king’s troops at dawn. When Mel tells the men that she will be joining them, her brother blanches, but Shevraeth does not say a thing.

Bran leaves Mel and Shevraeth, and the two sit in silence. Despite the glowing Fire Stick, his study is cold and damp. Mel stares blankly at the map still spread out across the table, and when she looks up, she finds Shevraeth’s gaze pinning her down.

“You don’t have to do this tomorrow,” he says to her. It’s just like that night in the dungeon, the night he came to inform her of her pending execution. He had wanted her to buy herself time then, and now his message feels the same. She can’t understand why though. What difference it would have made to him then, what difference it would make now.

“You want all the glory for yourself, that it?” she asks. She attempts to parrot his courtly drawl, but misses the mark. She just sounds tired.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says again, only quieter this time, yet more insistent.

Mel sighs. “Yeah, except I sort of do. I started this after all. I guess that means I have to end it.”

Shevraeth frowns slightly.

“Tomorrow . . . won’t be easy.”

“Don’t patronize me,” she snaps. “Bran might not know it, but I get it. A lot of us are expected to die tomorrow, right? Is that what you’re trying to say? That I’m marching to my death come dawn? Because I know that. I know what I have agreed to, and I’m not going to cower up in this drafty old castle while everyone else fights my battles for me.”

For the first time since she met him, for the first time since that interrogation in the Baron’s camp, Shevraeth looks openly at her. The mask is gone, and he’s just a man -- a tired, resigned man, and Mel does not think anyone has ever looked at her this way before.

“I know it,” he says, his voice tight. “I thought it was at least worth trying.”

“Why do you even care?” she asks. “Consider it: after tomorrow you’ll have one less political enemy to contend with.”

His face sours, and even with the beard, she can see his jaw clench.

“You resent being treated a fool and yet you act one,” he muses, more to himself than her, it seems.

“Fuck you,” she spits out, and springs to her feet. It feels good, it feels really good to finally curse him out the way she has wanted to this entire time. “Fuck you.”

Shevraeth rises to his feet as well, but he does not step away. Instead he closes the distance between them. Mel’s heart is pounding, and she has no idea what she wants. She wants to push him away, she wants him to stay just where he is right now, she wants him closer, she wants to feel him.

He cups her jaw, his fingers rough and calloused, and she shivers noticeably when his thumb sweeps just below the swell of her bottom lip.

He looks at her face carefully, but he does not say anything. Neither does she. Her eyes are wide, her neck craned so she can look up into his face, and when he kisses her, it still comes as a surprise to her.

He kisses her slow and deep, her mouth opening under his seemingly of its own volition. She had never kissed another man before, not like this. It feels like a punch to the gut. It feels like falling off that horse all over again, the wind rushing out of her, leaving her senseless and frightened, only this time, she finds she wants more.

He pushes her back, and her hair catches along the stone wall. He kisses her hungrily, and she hears herself making these small breathy sighs, her body arching away from the wall to press against him.

She knows of his reputation, or at least his reputation that reached Tlanth. While he was no Duke of Savona -- a different woman to decorate his bed each night -- he had his way with any courtly lady he might desire. But there is no finesse to him here, no finesse as he wrenches her tunic open, his hand hot and insistent as he palms her breast. He lifts her easily, their hips locking together, and despite her lack of experience, Mel does whatever feels natural to her. She grinds herself against him. She can feel him hard against her, and she bites his bottom lip.

He wrenches his mouth from hers and bites down along her neck, making her clench wet and empty between her legs. In the back of her mind, somewhere, wherever in her head things still make sense, she’s sort of amazed that this can feel so good.

He stumbles with her and drops her onto the camp bed he has set up in the corner of the study. The blankets smell musty, but also of him. He hovers over her for a beat, his breathing as ragged as her own, and she doesn’t know what he’s waiting for. She grabs him by the wrist and drags his hand down between her legs, and over her clothing he starts to rub at her, insistent and demanding, and Mel whines high in the back of her throat. He mouths at her exposed breast, and her fingers dig against his scalp.

With her free hand, she tries to pull her own loose trousers down off her hips. Shevraeth grunts, bats her hand out of the way and pulls them down to her ankles, baring her to him. Mel makes a small sound and wriggles farther up the bed. Shevraeth leans back away from her, his hands frozen at his belt. She hates him for trying to make this something more noble, more honorable than it is. If she didn’t want this, she would have stopped him by now.

She hisses the word yes between her teeth, and that’s all he needed to hear. Her stomach tightens as she watches him, his cock thick and curving up against his stomach. He takes himself in hand and Mel can’t disguise the small mewling noise that slips between her teeth.

She knows that this is supposed to hurt. In a strange way, she finds she welcomes it -- the idea of him hurting her in such a physical, intimate way oddly appealing. He rubs his thumb against her, and he groans quietly as he works a finger inside of her. She feels like her skin is too tight for her body, like she’s going to burst absolutely everywhere if he stops. Her breath hitches as he adds another finger, and she grabs at his forearm, her palm sweaty. “Enough,” she gasps, “Just -- ”

When he pushes into her, it feels like too much. He’s too wide, and it burns. Tears spring to her eyes as he thrusts into her, so she screws her eyes shut. She aches around him, feels swollen and used, and despite the pain, she wants more.

He’s rougher than she expected, if she could ever admit to expecting anything from him. The bored detachment is completely gone, and all she can think as he moves his body over, against, inside her own is that he looks just as he did back in that dungeon at Chovilun -- fighting for his life, fighting for hers.

When she comes, he tries to swallow her mouth, swallow her sounds, with his own.

13.

The battle begins at dawn.

As promised by the Marquis, nothing of it comes easy for them.

Mel is separated from both her brother and Shevraeth early into the battle. The entire ride to the battlefield had been tense and awkward. Shevraeth belied nothing, but Mel found she could scarcely even look at him without blushing deep and furiously.

Mel’s sword-work on horseback leaves much to be desired. She can deflect well enough but can hardly mount an offense. She holds her own for a longer time than she anticipated (her shield coming marvelously in handy), but it all comes crashing down in the form of a sword raised against her head.

Without thinking, she raises both her free hand and her sword in a gesture of defense. The sky tilts as the falls, all the gray stretching as she flips backward from her horse, her body meeting the ground hard.

The wound that results take a moment for Mel to absorb.

She looks down at her right hand and she cannot understand what she is seeing: four fingers instead of five. Four fingers, her right ring finger now gone.

The pain is brilliant for a moment, shocking in its precision and sharpness. The soldier charges at her again, and Mel blindly swings her shield up, the hit reverberating up her arm, a steady ache. She is unsure what happens to the soldier after that, but she hauls herself to her feet, readies herself for another blow that does not come.

She holds her wounded hand to her stomach, and the blood flows freely. There’s so much of it, she finds herself thinking, for such a seemingly mild wound. A finger. Nothing more. A finger. But she can feel her pulse aching at the severed joint, she can feel her own blood seeping through her tunic and mail to dampen against her skin, already cold with sweat.

She feels dizzy, and her knees buckle and sway, mud sucking at her boots, and she stumbles.

The battle rages around her. She feels removed from it all, a ghost wandering among the revelers, and they ignore her.

Her brother makes for a miserable soldier, and she watches the utterly undisciplined way he attempts to fight off the king’s men that surround him. His horse frightens under him, tries to buck him off, and her brother fights against that front as well: the king’s soldiers, his own horse, his lack of unstudied training. He holds his ground, but Mel considers calling to him, unsure what good that might do other than distract attention away from him.

Mel takes another step forward, and trips over a fallen soldier. She saves her balance only to be struck about the back of the head by what she imagines is the helm of a sword. She lands face first in the mud.

Her eyes flicker closed.

Her eyes open.

What she remembers of the battle is sketchy at best.

She can remember the pounding pain in her hand matched by the pain at the back of her head, how every part of her was coated in either mud or blood.

She can recall trying to get up, her elbow slipping through the dirt as she tried to rise.

She remembers the Marquis. His sword caught the sunlight that fell through the parted clouds. All she could see was a tall silhouette, a blade extended, cutting his way towards her.

She remembers being gathered into someone’s arms, she remembers the pain as she felt a hand grab at her wrist. A voice -- she remembers that too. The steady way that voice cursed under its own breath, the way it said her name like some sort of desperate plea.

“Mel? Meliara? Wake up. Wake up, Mel. Mel. Stay with me. Mel. Mel. Stay -- ”

She remembers that.

14.

When she wakes, the war is over.

It’s that easy.

Or perhaps not.

When she wakes, she wakes to Bran next to her bed.

“Well, look who decided to rejoin the land of the living,” he says.

Mel’s hand aches, and she finds herself almost too afraid to look down at it.

It’s from Bran she learns the war is over. She learns that Shevraeth killed the king himself, the king who had charged for Mel even after she had cast herself facedown in the mud, unconscious and bleeding out.

It was Shevraeth who brought her back to the fortress.

It’s Shevraeth she has to marry now.

“Wait, what.”

Bran grins sheepishly.

“The peace is fragile, sis,” he says, conversationally, as though he isn’t talking about marrying her off to the highest bidder, also known as the Marquis of Shevraeth. “A marriage between Tlanth and Renselaeus would help ensure that peace remains -- especially if Vidanric is to be king.”

“King?” she spits. “So I’d be -- ? Oh, no. No no no, no, no.”

“For god and country, Mel,” Bran says.

Mel falls back into the pillows. Who would have thought that waging an actual war would be the easy part?

The dress they help her into is voluminous -- the outer skirt of the dress held out by shelves of lace petticoats beneath. It is easily the finest gown Mel has ever worn, and actually, come to think, perhaps the only gown she has ever worn. The lace scratches against her skin, and she takes small, mincing steps forward to gaze at herself in the mirror.

She does not even look herself. Her face is still drawn and pale from their weeks on the run. The black eye has all but faded, and the maids attending her have painted over with their sickly smelling cosmetic grease. She has not grown any taller over the course of the war, but she has grown thinner. There is nothing innately feminine about her frame. She is, instead, all avian -- light of bone, seemingly fragile and brittle. The extravagance and size of her dress only adds to the illusion; she is positively drowning in it.

“Stay still now,” one of the maids (Mel has yet to learn their names; there are so many of them, and her brother had scoffed when she said as much -- “You’re to be Queen, Mel. Goes with the territory, I’d reckon”) tells her. She fights the urge to fidget. Her shoulder blade twitches against the fabric, and the maid in question places a heavy crown upon her head.

“I look absurd,” she says, more so to her reflection than to the crowd of maids surrounding her.

Without thinking, she taps her right ring finger against her thumb.

(If, at the time, she had been the sort of person inclined to laugh at herself, she would have found the irony of this particular scenario delightful -- her ring finger gone, and soon, should she survive, she would be expected to marry none other than the Marquis of Shevraeth, no finger for him to place a wedding band upon).

Just after the war, Shevraeth called in the best doctors to see to her hand, disgusted with each report that nothing could be done. “It’s not like I can grow a finger back, no matter how much gold you throw at it,” she had told him, and he had frowned.

“I guess the perfect king will have to go without a perfect wife,” she said. That made him smile, which was the opposite reaction she had been aiming for.

“No,” he had replied. “My wife comes with some assembly required,” he said, cruel in such a practiced fashion it took a beat for his words to sting.

In the end, he had a porcelain finger fashioned for her. Between Shevraeth and his cousin, the fashionable Duke of Savona, the look had become quite the trend. Bejeweled ring fingers clad in lace or gold were spotted throughout the court, and when Mel had learned of it, she had sneered and groused.

“Well at least they didn’t cut them off,” she had said. The Duke had laughed, and Shevraeth had merely, cryptically, arched an eyebrow.

“Say the word, love, and the slicing and dicing shall commence,” the Duke said, and under his breath Shevraeth had said, “Don’t give her any ideas.”

They marry in the capital, the both of them still more the worse for the wear. There is a fine, healing line that runs down the side of his face, just below his right eye. Looking up at him in front of the massive crowd gathered to see them wed, she can’t help but wonder if the scar will remain.

If he’s been marked same as her.

Mel tries not to scowl when Shevraeth takes her hand in his. He runs his his own ring finger over her porcelain one, and she snorts derisively, though quietly.

Shevraeth merely raises an eyebrow.

15.

Their wedding is the sort of spectacular event people come from all across the realm to attend. Mel imagines that if she was an objective spectator, she might be able to enjoy it, but as the bride in question she finds herself resentful and anxious.

She sits beside Shevraeth at the bridal table overlooking the spacious, and crowded, dance floor.

She takes another long pull from her goblet, grateful for the tart taste.

“You like the wine?” Shevraeth asks beside her, his tone bored, but his mouth is creased in an amused smirk.

“Don’t be nice to me,” she snaps. She finishes her wine.

She will repeat herself later, when it is just the two of them, alone, inside the royal bed chamber. As embarrassed as she is by the events the night before the final battle, she has to admit she is grateful that this -- their wedding night -- won’t be her first time.

Shevraeth attempts to romance her, or at the very least turn this into something that would transpire between a loving husband and wife, but Mel does not want that.

“Don’t be nice to me,” she hears herself snarl. His fingers tighten against her thighs, and she isn’t looking at him. She has her forearm draped over her eyes, her chin raised, but she can hear him, the way he inhales sharply and slowly (like he’s collecting himself, she thinks). Suddenly, he jerks her by the legs and drags her body that much farther down the bed.

His hands are rough against her and her slams into her without prelude. She makes a noise that sounds something embarrassingly like a yelp, but that doesn’t stop him. He rocks into her at an almost frantic pace, his composure all but dropped. He fucks her hard, and a part of her wants this to hurt. It does, but not in the way she thinks she wants. It burns, he feels too big inside of her, his body too heavy against her, but with all that comes the undeniable fact that she wants it. She can’t stop her hips from making tiny movements against him.

He must not like the sounds she is making, because his body stills over hers. He pulls out of her, and she shudders, bites her bottom lip. “Why are you stopping?” she gasps.

He doesn’t answer her. Even in the shadowed room she can see the predatory gleam to his eye. He slides down her body, his mouth open low against her abdomen and she can feel the muscles under his mouth flutter. He eats her out. His mouth between her legs, and he didn’t do this to her last time. There wasn’t time for that. And sure, she knew people did this. Oria had been her constant supply of information when it came to stuff like this, and Mel can remember a very specific occasion when the two of them had been hiding in the overgrown garden so as not to have to muck out the stalls and Oria had told her what she had seen the baker’s girl Erika and the smith’s apprentice doing out by the fresh water springs.

He was kissing her, Oria had said, down there.

That had been a long time ago, and Mel had frowned. Mel had asked, why would anyone do that? and Oria had laughed at her.

She isn’t thinking of Oria or the baker’s daughter or the smith’s apprentice now. She’s not thinking of Tlanth. She’s really not thinking much of anything at all, save to keep her mouth shut. She bites her bottom lip until it bleeds, and the only sound that escapes her belongs to her heavy breathing.

He licks her with the flat of his tongue. His mouth is open and wet, and she can hear the way his lips smack against her flesh, filthy and noisy, and it makes her body twist, twist at the waist, and she contorts her torso away from him, but he still holds her down by her hips, his grip unyielding. She presses her own open mouth against the inside of her arm and closes her eyes.

She is fine, she thinks, but she rolls her hips. She has this in control. She has this in her control, except for how she doesn’t. Except for the fact Shevraeth (she cannot call her husband by the name of his lands; it’d the same for their people to call her by his name, call him by her name, the things we own naming ourselves), has hauled one leg over her shoulder, and has opened her, filled her, with his fingers.

She bites the thin skin of her inner arm to disguise what would most likely be a howl of pleasure, and grinds her heel into his upper back. He grunts against her, he grunts into her, and this is not what she wanted. This isn’t what she ever wanted -- a crown, this man, this man making her come in his bed. But he is and she is, and he’s still sucking at her flesh, still holding her open. If there ever was a reason to hate a man, here’s one: he worms his way under your skin, he makes you want him, makes you not want to admit it, and the worst of all -- he makes you enjoy it.

Mel’s body is still twisted away from him, but she throws her head back and sucks in a loud breath.

He is slow to pull back away from her, and his fingers are wet against her thigh. The muscle there shivers under his touch, and he can feel it, he knows it: his mouth quirks into a small smug smirk, and he drags his fingers over her skin.

“You still want me mean?” he asks her. He opens her legs wider for himself, and the muscles at the insides of her thighs protest. He rubs himself against her, his hips bucking slightly; his mouth parts, and she can’t stop staring at him. He rubs against her again, and she had no idea that two people could react to one another this way. She has no idea why people don’t warn about this, how senseless and stupidly hungry another can make you.

“I just want -- ” she says, and even that feels like too much. Too much for her, but enough for him, because he holds her steady -- a wide hand low on her abdomen and pushes inside of her, rough and quick, and she can’t help but clench tight around him.

He fucks her hard, merciless with her body. She hears herself making these small whimpering noises each time he moves inside of her, and it’s not fair. It’s not fair that he gets to reduce her to this, that he has her clawing at his back, unsure if she wants him to stop or to never stop, unsure if admitting this feels incredible is a confession her pride could permit her to bear.

Each thrust leaves her feeling hollowed out and aching, wet in a way that almost has her embarrassed. His body completely covers her, and he tangles a hand in her hair, makes her arch her neck back and he sucks messily at the faint line of her pulse. She thinks that’s when she breaks. She thinks that’s when she draws her knees up, and everything inside of her tightens to a near painful point, and then releases.

She comes quietly, choking on the word more, and that makes him laugh, breathless and hot just under her jaw. She can’t stop saying that single word, she can’t stop begging it.

His hips have lost all rhythm, moving jagged and harsh, their hip bones knocking together, until he grunts her name, his mouth just below hers, grinding himself against her, and she’s shaking again, it feels too good, she’s shaking, and she feels him come inside her.

He says her name again, and when he kisses her, she kisses him back.

Some might call it a start of sorts.

16.

The end of the war and the start of a new reign is rarely a bloodless undertaking.

Factions still exist throughout the realm, Galdran’s loyalists still itching for a fight, for an opportunity to reclaim what they feel Shevraeth has wrongly taken.

The unspoken tumult within the kingdom (hilariously) matches the same within their marriage. Their marriage mirrors their time on the road -- his unfaltering, albeit condescending, patience and her own hair trigger temper.

Each advance he makes towards her she rebuffs. Their marriage is an exercise in perfectly matched swordplay -- thrust and parry, advance and retreat, offense and defense.

Amidst their own problems, plots for the throne emerge.

And with these plots, failed attempts at kidnapping.

On this occasion, Mel finds herself at the mercy of some long-lost cousin of the late King Galdran’s in their own royal garden, and she can’t help but roll her eyes even with the blade pressed against her throat.

The situation, as their guards refer to it, is diffused with minimal mess -- Shevraeth (her husband, the king, she is still not entirely sure how this is her life) arriving and attempting to talk her would-be assassin down, and when that fails, utilizing brute force.

Brute force, as always, garners the desired result.

Shevraeth grabs her by the elbow as she stumbles away from the grappling guards and their unwanted visitor.

He draws his hand down her exposed neck, and she hisses when his fingers meet the small nick the blade has left behind.

“Are you all right?” he asks her, and once again, Mel rolls her eyes.

“I’m fine. I’m in one piece.” His eyes are narrowed and keep returning to the smudge of her blood at her neck. She sighs noisily. “For the love of -- . Just because we’re stuck with each other doesn’t mean you have to turn this into something it’s not.”

Mel fidgets and pulls at her crown. It tangles in her hair and she curses quietly as she yanks at it.

“Stop it,” Shevraeth says to her. “Stop it, come here.” He reaches for the crown and gently untangles her hair from the barbed points.

Mel bites the inside of her cheek as Shevraeth (uncharacteristically, she might note) toys with her crown in his hands.

“I do not,” he says, “view myself as . . . stuck with you.” He catches her eye, and Mel swallows, unsure of what direction they are treading.

“Fine,” she says. “You’re not stuck with me.”

He frowns, completely serious, and she knows -- she knows she does not want to hear whatever he might say next. It will be too much. It will be that point they do not return from.

“I wanted you,” he says plainly. “You’re all I’ve wanted.”

“You don’t mean that,” she says. She feels meek and small, but something else. Something that is making her heart pound hard and fast, something that is making her blush.

His expression is almost earnest when he says to her, no affectation, no drawl: “I have wanted you from the start.”

“You don’t mean that,” she repeats, just above a whisper.

He does not say anything, but he cups her face in his hands. She blinks up at him. “You’ve had me on the hunt from the moment we met,” he says softly. He passes the pad of his thumb over her lips, and her mouth parts open slightly for him. “Aren’t you tired of running?” he asks, and Mel’s heart pounds.

“And make it easy for you?” she jokes. He smiles. He presses his forehead against hers, and she closes her eyes, just briefly.

This story ends the way it began: a botched attempt at rescue. Only this time, this time, Mel wanted him, she wanted Vidanric to rescue her.

She wanted him to be the one to sweep in through the door, always just in the nick of time even if and when he is too late.

She doesn’t know how to tell him that. Not yet.

So she kisses him. She presses her lips to his, and she can feel the way his mouth pulls into a grin, so she kisses him harder.

She does not know how to say she only runs because she knows that he will chase her.

So she kisses him again.

She says his name.

fin.