Vengeance
"You named my father a traitor! Cast us out to steal, starve, and die! You have no idea what I have lost! How many of my brothers I have buried!"
Mary had never hated someone so much as she hated Munroe in that moment.
"This is why you wish to kill me? This is why my husband is dead?" She thought she would explode then and there. Truly. This man was nothing but a fool, and he wanted vengeance on her for something she had not even done - for something she had not even known about. All of this...it had all been for absolutely nothing. "I gave no such order. My mother sat the Scottish throne while I was an ocean away! She made her own decisions!" She nearly screamed the words at him.
It had all been for nothing. The thought kept circling around her head, and she was filled with such hatred for him.
"In your name, they are your sins!"
A breathy sound, half-laugh, half-sob, escaped and she took a step toward him. "Look into my eyes!" she pleaded with him, bordering on hysteria. "I never gave any order against your family. And now my husband is dead for nothing." God, she couldn't even think Francis's name. She thought she would actually bleed out with the pain coursing through her at the moment, but of course there was no wound. It was all in the heart.
Oh, how she hated him. She hated him for taking Francis, for ripping her heart straight out of her chest and leaving her with only a gaping hole where it had once been. She would kill him this day if it was the last thing she ever did.
"It doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter where it began." Munroe was gripping the sword. Her sword. The one Francis had made with his own hands for her. My queen, my light, my love, it said. Her vision turned red just at the sight of his hands still on it. "Someone has to finish it."
Mary looked up at him, a strange sort of calm seeping into her bones now. She nodded once, took hold of the necklace he had given her only moments before. She had chosen it for the sharp edges. "I know."
Just as he went to raise the sword, Mary moved forward and plunged the sharp point of the necklace into his throat, something he clearly had not been expecting. The chain broke and she used that to shove it further. The man made a gurgling noise, slumped forward against her. Swooping down and snatching up her sword, she plunged it up through his stomach, discarding the jewelry.
He gasped and crumpled further.
His blue eyes met her hazel ones, stunned, panicked, dying.
She smiled at him. Leaned in closer.
"I would have stayed in France for the rest of my life," she snarled, teeth clenched, her breathing slightly heavy. "But you brought me here, you took my heart. And now I've come to repay you."
Shoving him away, she released her hold on him. His blood stained her yellow dress as she looked down on him, sword clutched in one hand and tears no longer stinging her eyes. She had done what she set out to do.