At first Madalena thought the shrieking that was coming from down the hall was her birdbrained dolt of a husband. Richard was the biggest overgrown baby she had ever met in her life. How he got to be ruler of this entire kingdom was beyond her knowledge. She ignored the shrieking the first few times it came calling down the hallway, but it was starting to give her a headache now.
She stood from the chair beside her vanity and stormed off in the direction of the noise, eager to give her husband an earful. Though, as she came closer to the noise Madalena realized that it wasn't the usual high-pitched yelp that she had grown accustomed to living with the king all these long and tedious months.
Madalena held a hand to her head, trying to sooth the headache that was forming as she walked into the throne room. Her eyes widened at the sight that greeted her for just a moment- Gareth was standing on a chair, impossibly tall as he loomed over a tiny, insignificant spider. She cocked her head at him, shaking it slightly. "What on god's green earth is going on in here? I was trying to have a moment of peace but apparently that's too much to ask for around here."
"S-spider!" Gareth pointed, still not climbing down from the chair. She stifled a laugh- never in all the time she'd known the king's henchman had she ever expected him to be scared of anything, but there he stood unwilling and possibly even unable to come down from where he stood out of range of the tiniest little spider. He let out another shriek as it crawled a little bit across the floor, just doing it's own little spider thing.
She rolled her eyes and realized that if she was ever going to maintain her sanity Madalena was going to have to take care of this. She walked over to the spider, then placed the tip of her pointed high-heeled shoes right on top of it- hearing that satisfying squish, just like all those men she'd crushed under her foot.
She blinked up at Gareth, watching as he finally overcame his fear and climbed down from up high. "Is there any there anything else I should be protecting you from, Gareth? Or have you and your shadow been getting along today?"
"I don't like bugs." Gareth finally said after he straightened up. They eyed each other warily, neither saying a word. Madalena was too exasperated and Gareth, for all his masculine heroics looked a bit sheepish currently. "Uh, right then. Everything's good. No need to tell anyone about this now, you hear?"
She rolled her eyes once more. "Gareth, darling, you're so dull you never come up in any of my conversations."
Gareth set his jaw at her words, but Madalena simply left him standing there before he could reply. He was her subordinate as long as she was queen, which meant there was nothing he could do or say to her anyway. Once she was certain that silence would return to the castle, she walked back to her bedchamber, muttering about how everyone was inept and how she had to do everything around here including the exterminating.
Despite her promise never to bring up this embarrassing incident again though, she filed it away in the back of her mind. There was never any telling when she would need some juicy gossip or some kind of underhanded move against someone else in this castle. If Gareth ever dared cross her in the future, there were many fun ways she could think of to torture someone with spiders.
.End.