Part 6
The End
"The weddings tomorrow." Eleanora finally spoke after standing in silence for the past fifteen minutes.
"I wish you could see me in my wedding gown. Knowing you, as soon as you saw me in it you'd probably tear up and then chase Lycan around the castle with a battle axe or something screaming.." she laughed slightly before doing her poor imitation of her father. "You'd better not break my baby girls heart, or I'll shove this so far up your rectum the blade will pop out the other side."
Eleanora had refused to go to the entombment of her father; not even Lycan would have been able to get her to budge on that one. She had already felt overwhelmed. Watching her father's lifeless body be sealed up, knowing that she would never get to see him again... she wouldn't have been able to come back from that, but Lycan understood completely, which didn't surprise her at all because even though he was the biggest jerk she knew, he was also the most caring and understanding person she had ever met.
Just thinking about Lycan lifted her spirits a little.
She hadn't gone to the entombing, but after she finished blaming the disease, the world, and even herself. After crying until the tears just wouldn't come. After waking up and running to her toilet and vomiting, from the nightmares of her father on his deathbed being ripped apart by a great sea dragon, while she was forced to watch in horror, screams muted by some invisible force, her hands and feet too heavy to move. After finally accepting that he was gone, and there was nothing she could do about it. After finding the strength to finally get out of bed and start eating again and pushing play on her life again. Then, and only then, did she decide to finally take a trip over to the Vitania family crypt and visit her father.
It had been a month since that moment, and even though it felt like her heart would explode every time she visited, she didn't let that stop the hour she spent next to his coffin almost every single day.
Lycan, being her ever so devoted (and drop dead gorgeous) knight, had come with her every time she visited, waiting outside the crypt for her each time, but this time, he couldn't. They were following the stupid tradition of the groom not seeing the bride before the wedding, so he was probably sparring with the other royal guards or somewhere not writing his vows like he was supposed to be doing.
But Eleanora was not alone today. Being royalty, she was hardly ever alone. Syphon stood stiff as a board near the entrance, trying and failing miserably to seem as if he wasn't listening in on her private moment.
Sometimes, she hated being royalty.
"I really wish you were here right now," She sobbed before taking a deep breath, steadying herself, "I'll come visit again tomorrow. Same time." She placed a hand on the casket, allowing herself to linger for a while, the need to be with her father almost taking her out by the knees.
She forced herself to take her hand off it, turn around, and walk over to Syphon.
******
Eleanora sighed. She had been staring down the door that led into her sisters quarters for three minutes now, playing around with the idea of just turning back around and leaving.
After father's death, Eleanora had tried (fruitlessly) to get closer to the ungrateful bit.. to her sister. It was all Lycans fault for that speech he gave about how only she and her sister truly understood what the other was feeling, and so Eleanora had decided to try and reach out and comfort her sister, but her sister, to no surprise of Eleanora's, had no interest in being comforted by Eleanora. That hadn't stopped her attempts, however.
She had departed with Syphon as soon as they had arrived to the room, telling him that it would most likely take a while and that one of the maids would walk her back to her room. All of which was a lie. This probably wouldn't even last longer than five seconds, and she definitely wouldn't have a maid take her back to her room. She would most likely sneak off to the royal gardens and hide amongst the flora for a while. After trying and failing with her sister like usual, she'd need to be alone so as not to unintentionally unleash her frustration upon the undeserving.
She took another deep breath before letting herself in without knocking (she had learned early in her attempts that if she announced her presence, her sister would just lock the door and ignore her existence).
Pumpkin spice. That was the first thing she noticed. The room smelled like pumpkin spice. The next thing that she noticed were the lights... they were off, but she could see candles were lit.
"Explains the smell." She thought as she opened the door some more.
"Hey M.." Her words caught in her throat, and her heart stopped.
This couldn't be happening.
"Lycan."
He wouldn't meet her eyes.
"Lycan!"
Her sister was smiling.
"How could you Lycan!" Burning hot tears streamed down her cheeks in rivers.
Her sister was on top of him the sheets covering only their lower halves. Her sisters breast were exposed and so was Lycans chest.
"You bastard! How could you! How could you..."
Her head screamed in agony. It felt like someone was trying to melt it from the inside, and she couldn't move, her mouth hung open in a silent scream. It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!
"Lex!? Lex are you ok!? Come on say something! I swear I'll raze this backwater country to the ground if she's hurt! Lex!"
She tried opening her eyes but the light was too bright and she quickly shut them again. Her head felt fuzzy, and she wasn't sure where she was, who she was, or what was happening.
"Lex!"
The fuzz in her brain was washed away with recognition, and everything came flooding back. Lillian's wounds, Kaeron bringing them to a his ex fiancé's country to help Lillian so she wouldn't die, Kaerons imprisonment, and the ex fiancé's challenge. It all came back to her.
This time she forced her eyes open, and with shaking arms and legs stood up staring down the woman who had done this to her, but she couldn't help the sadness that now tinted her view of the queen.
Eleanora smiled sadly. "I wish I could say you get used to that, but you don't trust me. I use this," she tapped a syringe with that nasty looking purple liquid inside, "to revisit the times before my family had been torn apart.." She took a breath, "and you never get use to it."
"Lex, you alright." Lycan.. Kaeron let out a breath of relief.
Lex kept her focus on Eleanora.
"You were never going to have me guess were you?"
"No I wasn't."
"So all of this was just..."
"Just to show you what kind of a monster your brother is. You were right all along. This was all about how your brother told me he loved me and then disappeared like the coward he is, leaving me alone to banish my sister, and days later having to have my own mother executed for killing my little brother in a drug haze."She blinked away tears that had been forming and continued. "I am now alone, and I just wanted him to hurt as much as I do, and you were nothing more than a casualty. Did it work? Has the illusion finally been shattered?"
Lex took a deep breath. Her body was finally feeling normal again, and her legs were no longer shaking.
"If you're asking if I still love my brother. I'm sorry to disappoint but I do."
Eleanora shook her head. "That's not what I meant." She took a step towards Lex. "I want to know. Do you still trust your brother?"
She looked at Kaeron before meeting Eleanora's gaze. "Of course I do."
Eleanora smiled. "Liar."
Before Lex could respond Eleanora lifted a hand silencing her.
"Unshackle the prisoner Syphon, and send word to the medical team to bring the other one, they're free to go, oh but Lycan." She turned her back to Lex, and slithered over to Kaeron. "If you ever comeback here. I don't care why, or with whom. I'll have you killed on the spot. Do I make myself clear?"
Kaeron nodded once, and it was obvious that he was holding back whatever it was he had to say.
"Good. Now get him out of my face. I feel like vomiting just looking at him.
******
It had been over an hour and Lex still hadn't spoken a singular word in his direction. They had been escorted back to the surface by Syphon and four others from Eleanora's royal guard, two of which he knew, where they were met by three merfolk in medical garbs. Two were holding Lamb's unconscious body, while the other explained her situation and the medicine supplied and how much she'd need to take a day, blah, blah, blah. After that they had carefully secured Lamb into the back of his car with Lex plopping the girls head into her lap, instead of joining him in the front where they could talk about this, but that was to be expected, if there was one thing the Deitas's did not do well, it was talk about their feelings.
They had driven straight by the small town of orcs and were headed out of the forest... in torturous silence. He was trying to give her space to come to him so that they could talk it out but fuckkkk, was she making it difficult when he'd catch her staring at him in the rearview mirror only to have her immediately look away. There was clearly something on her mind and he wanted to reassure her that Eleanora was just a petty bitch, and that whatever she might have seen was only one half of the story, but sadly Lex was probably the most stubborn person he knew, and he was a very impatient person, so when the second hour had come and gone, and Lamb still hadn't stirred Kaeron calmly and subtly lost his shit.
"What? Huh? What is it that you saw, or heard, or smelled, in there that has you not talking to me Lex? Whatever it is, I'm sure its... probably bad, but come on you know I was under Draefin's orders and a young kid. Can't we just talk about it and get this over with already before I go insane and drag whatever it is from out your bloody corpse!?" He roared.
She slowly lifted her head and met his eyes in the rearview. Multiple emotions danced inside those knowing black eyes of hers, and even though she spoke in a low calm tone, her scent was a mixture of anger and fear.
"It was you, wasn't it?"
"What was?"
"You gave Eleanora's mother the drugs. You're the reason that little boy is dead aren't you?"
He quit breathing. "Why would you think that?" He tried.
"Don't lie to me Kaeron or I swear on our mother..." She took a deep breath steadying herself. "It's the only thing that makes sense. It's like you said. You were under Draefin's orders, and yet all that I saw was you and her falling in love and you cheating on her? How does that benefit Draefin? You two didn't even get married so all you achieved was to make her mad at you, so what did Draefin order you to do Kaeron?"
He opened his mouth to respond, shut it, and opened again only to shut it again.
"Kaeron!"
"Alright! I'm sorry, it's just... I never expected to have to tell you about this okay. It's not my most proud moment..."
"So it's true?" She sobbed.
"Draefin had met a passing necromancer who told his future in which the male heir to the Vitania throne would some day kill him, and you know necromancers are almost never wrong which is why most of them were killed off a millennium ago, so of course Draefin was terrified by the news, even though there was no male heir born yet, there wasn't even whispers. He didn't care. He sent me to make sure that if one was ever born I'd be there to... deal with it." Kaeron focused his attention on the road ahead, avoiding his sisters now grief stricken face.
"Eleanora's mother hated the kid and the kids mother and was heartbroken by the passing of her husband. So I used that to my advantage. I gave her a bottle of Tarazen, and told her it would help with the grief, and I let the pills do the rest."
"And you slept with her sister because you knew that no one would be able to connect you to the drugs, but you wanted to be punished, because even you knew that what you had set in motion was wrong." She cried.
"I didn't want to have to kill any of my own children!" He yelled losing his own composure.
She stopped speaking, and the smell of anger was doused, only leaving the scent of tears, and disappointment. After a while he finally looked up at her in the rearview once more. She was gently stroking Lambs hair with one hand, and swiping at tears with the other.
"I loved her Lex, but I didn't have a choice."
The car went silent once again, but this time, Kaeron didn't try to break it.