She was often treated as if she were some pure, pious figure, devout and steadfast in her virtues. And she was, to a certain extent. But virtues aren't necessarily morality, and she, despite all appearances, wasn't necessarily a good person.
The truth was that she had stolen much in her life. The truth was that she wasn't sorry.
When she was two, for example, she stole her mother's prized gloves—just took them straight from her dresser and waddled away in gleeful triumph. She didn't regret, and never has. Her mother never asked.
And when she was seven, she stole the white dragon. She'd lured the guards away with a mysterious stain of blood on the foyer floor—her blood, her own blood, slashed from her hand by an ice dagger that her mommy always, always, always insisted she keep under her pillow—and she slipped into the dragon keep under the protection of twilight and took the beast. For many hours, she was Xelha. Just Xelha. When she came back, the palace was in an uproar, condemning her for her selfishness and lack of self-preservation. Didn't she know what the consequences were? Didn't she know that she was the last descendant to the Wazn royalty? How could she lie so effortlessly? But even as they accused and shouted and debased her, she thought about those kidnapped moments where she lived above the chaos of an august life, and couldn't bring herself to regret. She never has. Sanity is always in the stolen moments when you're a queen.
When she was seventeen, she stole a boy. She stole a boy and stole into his mission, a mission she knew was a fraud. But what did that matter? It wasn't as if she owed the boy himself anything—she was saving the earth from a dark god, and sacrificing the one is so much more frugal than sacrificing the world. This was the justification she needed to avoid the necessity of absolution that seemed so important to humanity—she was saving the world, what right did they have to accuse? And so throughout their journey, she used the boy dry, taking whatever she could whenever she could to achieve her ultimate goal, lying to their ragtag group of heroes when it was most convenient for her, pretending not to recognize the dark purpose that lied behind Kalas' relentless pursuit of the End Magnus. As long as he was ambiguously selfish, he was guiltless, she was guiltless, and maybe he could be persuaded to hunt another goal.
Because as soon as intent becomes known, it becomes solidified—it becomes less than a hazy future and becomes more of a driven intent. As soon as it becomes known, it strips away justification.
At seventeen, she stole Kalas' trust, but it was only fair, because he took her emotions. And if Xelha was to be completely honest, she didn't intend for her manipulation to go that far. That she started to feel something—anything at all—was a mistake, a slip-up. Because only fools fall in love with someone who can't love them back. Only fools fall in love.
Up until this journey, Xelha had played the fugitive. She had been trying to run from the responsibilities, from the guilt, of love all of her life—the expectation of action, of duty, that everyone seemed to carry for her. They were suffocating, stymieing. Because she could never escape these responsibilities; it was her manifest destiny as a sovereign to do what the world handed down to her.
That she loved Kalas was a mistake, a shackle. His emotional wasteland had nothing to offer. More than that, he was only a part of a whole world. Her mission, their mission wasn't about selfish desires—it was about doing anything, saying anything, taking anything, in order to save the tatters of their world. That was why she was willing to steal and lie to her friends, why she was willing to tarnish her soul with sin. Because she would. She would take anything to obliterate Malpercio for the last time in his interminable existence, and she would never regret the stains on her conscience. She would laugh as Malpercio burned to the ground in his vile divine flames, so a new, better world could rise from his ashes.
Because, despite herself, she found herself loving the world. Somewhere along the twisting paths of her journey, she had realized that is was no longer a time to run away, no longer a time to mischievously thieve the gloves from her mother's bureau or in desperation take the white dragon from its keep. Somewhere along the way, she had stepped up to the mantle of the queen she needed to become. That was why she was willing to sacrifice anything to give her world everything, that was why she was willing to bear the guilt of love to perform love's responsibilities.
And in the final battle, standing on the evil bastion that was Cor Hydrae, Malpercio was hit one final time and he fell in one mighty tumble. That was justification enough for all the things she had stolen. She could never regret.
When she was seventeen, she stole life. She was to die. As it had been for eons, she was to die so the earth could live. But she saw a chance, floating in the soft, white nothingness that is beyond living but not quite death, she saw a chance and she took it. And she lived. She didn't regret, and never has. The earth didn't suffer for her small spot of selfishness.
After the war, she stole the faces of other Wazn queens. She was lost, unsure of her proper duty, never having been instructed suitably in the traditional ways of the Ice Queen. And as she gazed around at the ageless sculptured faces of her predecessors, seeing a composure she could not yet match on her own, she realized she could play the game. She could look like that, if not feel it. So she blended her face into an amalgamation of theirs. Xelha was to be the most celebrated queen in all of Wazn for as long as the sovereignty lasted—and never did she create her own identity. She stole the past, and she could never regret it.
Xelha had many virtues, not all of them moral. She was a liar, a cheat, a manipulator, a thief. In the end, her morality was irrelevant—there are times where it's more important to act than remain spotless, and she had acted to save everything that their world was made of-love, life, responsibility. She will never be guilty.
After all, absolution is redundant when she can't find a reason to regret.
A/N: Xelha's an awesome character to write.