05: Values of a Queen

"What do you take value in, Lady Drusus?"

Lore, only seventeen, poured tea into her cup alongside a thin line of honey, sugar ignored entirely. Dusting her breath across it, she glanced to the speaker, huffing a slight laugh. "You'll need to learn me better for me to answer that question, Prince Bonaventura."

Crown Prince of Breacia, Addicus Bonaventura, smiled down at Lore from where he was leaning over her. He was twenty-two years to her seventeen. "If you'll allow me."

"What's there to allow? You're the Prince, I'm a mere Dame Drusus." Lore sighed, looking out at the valley they'd found themselves in. Her long red hair was pinned up simply, and she wasn't wearing a dress. Boyish, breaking propriety. She didn't care.

"As if that's true," Addicus scoffed, "your Drusus is still worth much. I know I couldn't force a Drusus anything."

His companion smiled into her cup, letting the taste of honey and elderberry linger. Delicately thumbing the rim, Lore hummed to herself even as she held a captive audience. "What do I value..?" her words came in a breath, near silent. It was a question she hadn't thought to ask herself before. Did she value her sword, or her kinfolk? Did she value the name and word of the gods, the honeyed mead Addicus always brought her, her very own name? What was there to value in this world where she felt so small?

Lore looked out into the value. Wind blowing through the trees, twirling and twisting as it laughed among the branches. A burbling brook, fish darting within it as they chased things untold. Dancing grass and wildflowers all throughout the value, whispering stories and mystery amongst themselves. Their horses, told and brave and reliable, nested between the roots of a massive tree that loomed over them. Herself, tall and boyish even as her features were delicate as any woman's. Addicus, with his eyes that were peppered with amusement and that smile he'd always kept for her.

"I value the world and everything in it. Including you, regrettable as it is." Her cheeks hurt from how much she was smiling, a pleasant burn.

"How reprehensible! To regret me, the great Addicus Bonaventura, heir to the throne, soon to be King of the Land." He paused in the act. "And by that I mean only Breacia. I don't want Eagle Emperor after me."

Giggles erupted from beside him, and adoring gaze followed their musical chime. Addicus felt his heart fumble in his chest as he joined her, and knew this was love.

Her own heart did that pleased thing, fluttering with the magic of infatuation. The burn of her cheeks only grew, and Lore's eyes stung as happy tears beaded along her lashes. This was something precious. A fond memory to look back upon, and a blessed thing while it lasted.

"I love you, Lore." Addicus said suddenly. "I've always loved you."

Then, just as the adoration bubbled within her and threatened to pour past her lips in an embarassing, overjoyed cacophony of sweet nothings and desperate praises, Lore woke up.

She wished she hadn't.

Usually, when one went from a state of unconscious to that of wakefulness, it was not particularly uncomfortable. Lore knew this. But when she slowly awoke, her head throbbed painfully, her eyes felt heavy and burned, her throat was dry enough breathing hurt, and her leg throbbed with the particular weight of a wound.

As she went to rub the crust from her eyes, she noted her wrists were rubbed raw and bound. It all came back in a flash.

She'd been attacked, injured, and presumably taken some place. Before that, she'd gone to meet Saint Caelestis at the temple—wasn't that girl injured? A pang of worry needled itself into her heart, increasing the groggy pained discomfort that echoed through her limbs.

"Saint Caelestis?" Lore murmured, squinting as she struggled to see in the dark of the room.

Finally, she managed to make out the blurry outline of the girl. Her wrists were just as bound as Lore's own, and a ring glinted obscenely on her finger. Some form of magic restriction, Lore assumed.

Limping over to her, Lore pushed her shoulder gently. Both were still wearing their gloves, she absently noted.

"Hm." Caelestis made a sleepy murmur, lifting herself from the cold stone of the floor. "Where..?" She blinked furiously, realization dawning on her. "Ah. Enemies of one or both of us. Of course." A glance was spared to the ring on her finger, and a mute smile harried her lips before quickly falling into numbness.

Sixteen. Caelestis was sixteen, and Lore doubted she'd have handled this so steadily at that age. That fury which had ebbed away slowly leaked back in, relighting the embers of hate within her. She glanced to the door, scowled, and then settled her focus back on Caelestis.

"I think I know something," the girl whispered, "of these madmen." A pause, somewhat awkward but nonetheless daunting. "As is the word of the Madness, power has with it the ability to corrupt."

Lore processed those words for a moment, turning the taste of them on her tongue. It was embittering.

"If I'd known that, I wouldn't have wanted to be Queen," she said dryly. An untruth, put simply. To be the Queen was never her desire in the first place. Rather, spending her days with her husband. For a brief moment, she thought to the people. She thought to herself. This silence she held with Caelestis was pleasant in its fleetingness.

"You're a Drusus, yes?" Caelestis spoke, not waiting for a reply. "You've never been followers of Kings nor Queens, yet have always rivaled them."

"Show them you're not just a Queen, but a warrior."

"Where are the Queen and Saint?" questioned one of the common folk from where they were crowded.

Braecia's pope, an aged man with craggy skin marked with liver spots and eyes milky with partial blindness, squinted out at the crowd. His position was one decided by both seniority and merit, much unlike that of a Saint position which was decided by the divines themselves.

"Little Caelestis hasn't yet appeared?" he frowned, pulling down his skin and only making it look more worn. "That makes it four hours she's been missing... this is unlike her."

Shouting rang out from the edge of the crowd. "It's the Palace Guard! They're looking for the Queen!"

The pope's frown drew itself downward ever further, strong resignation wearying his features. "So they're both missing. Something has happened."

An outroar erupted among the people amidst pandemonium as the pope and guard captain's gazes aligned.

"They were kidnapped. My Queen was kidnapped."

"And the ball is in less than a week's time." the pope remarked, humorless. "Find them, Fiore. The sooner the better."

"Mingxia." An accented voice liltingly spoke. A man's voice, a man who was bereft of jewelry, but was decorated with fine eastern garments. "You said you wanted to go to that ball in Breacia?"

"This wife does indeed, if husband allows it." An equally accented voice, high and sweet. It came from a beauty, long dark hair with a sheen of blue and reddish brown eyes the color of earth. There was a darker tint to her skin. This was Yeung Mingxia, the most favored consort of the Emperor in Akagi Empire.

"Eagle Emperor will be there."

Mingxia wrinkled her nose in distaste. "That man... he disturbs me." She shook our head. "I still want to go. Relations with Breacia are good. We should support the late King's wife."

The Emperor smiled. "This is why you are my favored." He, named Huang Ruoxuan, gently lifted his wife's chin and gave a press to her lips.

After what could have been minutes or hours, impossible to tell, the door to Lore's cage finally opened.

"Queen Bonaventura," a man spoke, smile visible beneath a half mask of the same wood as any other of the assassins. Reflexively, she put Caelestis behind her, even as her wounds throbbed. Hopefully her babe wasn't harmed by them.

"How lovely it is to see you."

Lore stayed silent, thoughts racing. Who, what for, and why had she been so weak then? Abnormally so, even if she was pregnant and grieving. It was more than a poison could do in mere minutes. Why was this man here, to mock them? She bit her lip.

"A foolish and weak Queen. So pitiable. If only the King hadn't died..." He propped himself up against the now closed door, keys jingling from the bangle on his wrist. From the way he carried himself, she could tell he was only slightly more skilled than his comrades. Small time kidnappers then, those who reduced themselves to subtle tactics like poison. She'd call it underhanded, but it was effective.

"You know we'll parade you in the streets. You and that saintess of the way After—as if a waif of a girl is suited to His Lordship—she was sniffing us out, after all. Caused quite the upset!"

Even as he revealed little, he revealed much. Her as a statement of her insufficiency and thusly Breacia's, Caelestis for being a female and an 'unsuitable' follower of Death. Despicable. Not that she could do much to show them just how despicable it was from her predicament.

"We made good money for this. A gift, let's say, from he who will be a better King to Breacia. To the benefit of our own homeland as well." He smiled, an unsubtle and crude thing. "I'm sure he'll cede us some of Breacia's land as... thanks."

From the corner of her eye, she saw the sheen of Caelestis' ring become duller. Something so subtle it would be hard to see if one hadn't been trapped in the dark with only the ring as light for hours. The man had brought an oil lamp that burned with joviality from where he'd set it on the floor. While she was glad of the light, she was more glad it made whatever it was easier to hide.

Then she felt something heavy hit lap, hidden by the folds of her dress, and her binds loosened. How had the girl..? It didn't matter. What mattered was making good of this opportunity.

As if in sync with her thoughts, the man gave her exactly what she needed as he loomed over her. The perfect moment to strike.