Hi guys, sorry I didn't post last week. I was travelling all weekend and then this week was so hectic I didn't get a chance to really sit down and edit until Wednesday by which point it made more sense to wait until tonight.

Anyway, as I mentioned last time, there will NOT be any non-con in this chapter.

Chapter 13: Inconsolable

Mana'jet was pregnant again, just lightly now but enough so that her belly bounced out a little under her wraps as she studded Yugi's ear with a new earring. It twinkled. She picked up the second of the set, Yugi tilted her head and sighed…

"What?" She murmured in their quiet corner of the Sultana's chambers. "You're dreamy eyed today Majesty. What's wrong?"

"It's nothing," she dismissed, "I'm tired."

"Nothing, nothing," the Princess snorted, "you have an awful lot of sighs for nothing."

"It's old things, that's all; men and marriage. What can we do?"

"Get you babies," Mana'jet chuckled in understanding, patting her knee with the casualness innate to this continent. "Whether you make them an occupation or a hobby they improve your sympathies for men in general."

"Hmm," Yugi drawled over her pause, "I don't know, love. I don't think I was made for mothering or wifely duties. I'd be better off on a mountain top. I don't feel anything for it in the right way. There's no excitement in the whole landscape when I prospect it."

"Oh great carriers, great women, never do find any," she grunted dismissively. "Cows have young endlessly, that's all they're good for, but for the great it's a distraction, a necessary evil, we endure to keep things running on. You lead, you rule, you are a practitioner and mystic having husbands and babes of your own is distracting."

Yugi sighed, elbows on the vanity, and leaning her face into her open fingers tried not to smudge the fresh kohl across her face. Her gold clicked as she moved, the diamonds and the pearls were heavy on her head, and majestic as she looked when she closed her tired eyes she remembered passing old things. She remembered sitting in the chair yonder with Qazzadara's belt in her hand, feeling the wrought gold, watching the old king hobble and complain aching with exhaustion.

"Love?" Mana'jet tilted a little closer. "Has that great fool I call brother said something he ought not to have?"

"No," Yugi mumbled, shaking in the cage of her fingers. "I just feel old today, darling. I miss my mother."

"And I mine," she assured hand wandering up and down Yugi's back. "It's hard, I confess, being grown. Are you sure you're well?"

"Yes, yes," she let her hands fall away to lay limp on the sheened surface of the wood. "Take the others to the hall will you? I'll follow behind in a moment."

"Of course," Mana'jet scraped out of her seat, one hand on her belly, the other on Yugi's back, her wet mouth briefly at Yugi's temple.

The attending nobles left in a swishing tide of heavy fabrics and when Yugi attempted to follow, as promised, a moment later she made it perhaps halfway down the hall before her feet were too stubborn to drag her any farther.

Pyres, his mother, Qazzadara, Abraxas, duty, rivers, gods, Anzu, babies….

Oh God…

Sickly she pulled herself out of sight feeling the way her bangles slid up her arms as she brought her hands a little closer to his face.

Yugi had not meant to pass Timaeus nor anyone else. She had thrown herself into the window behind the drawn curtain specifically in an effort to grant herself a moment's peace by resting her forehead into the cool glass but a moment later…

She heard the boots on the tiles, held herself straighter to obscure her weight in the niche, and steadying her breathing waited for the sound to pass. Yugi took a quiet inhalation, as if she were underwater and pushing at the curtain Sir Timaeus came between the seams of the fabric curiously.

"Majesty?" He murmured in that almost inaudible hoarse way of his. "Are you alright?"

"Ambassador," Yugi wiped her brow, clammy from the glass, mocking up a laugh of completely casual dismissal, "fine, I'm fine, what on earth are you doing here?"

"I saw you pass before in the opposite direction," he answered, "I wondered if…"

Oh gods, what now?

"Hmm?" Yugi pressed straightening the layers of her garb as if compelling the strangely cautious European to be out with it. "Yes, your Grace?"

"Forgive me," Timaeus lowered his chin slipping into the fold of the obscured niche, "this will seem rash but…"

"Oh out with it," she snorted impatiently heaving her shoulders with a gesture over the man though there was hardly any space between them. "You're tall enough and grizzled enough to speak to a wasp like me. What is it, your Grace?"

Timaeus' dead eye settled on Yugi like the surface of a steady pool as his good one seemed to waver almost uncertainly.

"I do apologize," he repeated.

Yugi frowned, one brow cocked up, and as the foreigner took the final step towards her Yugi expected a second too late the conspiracies of foul play or assassination by some outside king. Yet Timaeus drew no weapon, no not all, rather he took his step in darting up close. Afraid, it appeared, to touch Yugi with his roughened fingers. He dipped his head, eyes already half closed, and pressing with all the weight of an over eager but utterly terrified boy stole a kiss.

He yanked back.

Yugi blinked.

"I am sorry," Timaeus repeated swallowing.

"What's…?" Yugi laughed airlessly and humourlessly, "what's all this?"

"I am sorry you Majesty but…" he seemed embarrassed. "You've enchanted me an-"

"Shh!" She hissed hands flying to dig in her hair. "Oh not that word for god's sake!"

"I…" He stalled, lost, "I apologize."

"Shh," Yugi yanked with her voice, all curt. "Stop apologizing. What the devil do you mean by any of this?"

"Only that, despite myself, I feel a depth of affection for you I know is ludicrously improper." Timaeus swallowed. "It agonizes me and I could not contain myself any longer Majesty."

Yugi wavered, blinking thickly in a dull kind of amazement.

"Me…?" Yugi frowned. "I thought you wanted to marry?"

"So I tried to convince myself," the Ryussian croaked. "After your marriage to his Highness I knew there was no chance I could offer you anything noble. I supposed if I tried to push myself to a new romance then…I don't know, I couldn't manage it, I am so ridiculous at falling in love."

Yugi wheezed, voice caught, utterly bemused. What the devil? All those silly, polite, attempts at conversation? Was this some Ryussian version of wanton lust? Tiny chivalrous pecks and hand petting courtly love? God Yugi had forgotten what it looked like living here so long! But… God…no? Surely… Her mind, tight and tired and disillusioned stuttered over as Yugi's overwhelmingly practical, cunning, self crashed into all of the abrupt flushing of Timaeus.

And now? God, if it had to be any day, why today? It fell beyond the realm of even Yugi's patient endurance to fate.

"Why now?" Yugi hissed, spluttering useless. "For God's sake man what on earth possessed you to this today!"

"I…" Timaeus shook his head, shamed, "you're so often properly chaperoned Majesty I've never… I shouldn't have now but some wild part of me construed this as my only chance though I don't know at all what I expected I…"

All the soppiness of it fell slick off Yugi, wouldn't sink past the hardened crust barricading the fertile, once childishly romantic, soil underneath. Yugi had been a child once, Yugi had dreamed of being swept up by kings and the like but now, bitter, nothing about this sat right to her. Nothing here seemed probable at all to her.

Her stomach twisted.

"Did the King send you?" She found herself asking in curt, hurried, little whisper. "Is that what this is? Another chivalrous game of his?"

"What?" Timaeus didn't comprehend at all as Yugi's eyes burnt up at him. "God no! Not at all Sire! I just…I…"

Yugi felt herself lessen from her rise. There was nothing sinister in those eyes, nothing apparent, and shoulders shrinking down she knew not quite what to say. Her fingers shivering as she groaned she flattened back her hair from her face regarding the handsome specimen before her so lost in the marshes.

"Your Grace…"

Yugi shook her head, recovering to try again with her hands half up and her tongue weak but sharp.

"Your Grace in another time, or another place, I'd try that kiss of yours again for you made an ass of it the first time." Yugi shook her head. "Alas however I am married to a cad and I will not give him the match he needs to manage any new mischief against me. I must confess too that, while you're very dashing, my whole heart has been rendered very cold this last summer."

"I…" Timaeus shrunk down, that bold stature of his seeming to diminish. Some part of him Yugi sensed was glad at the assurance that no honor would be breached and yet another seemed disappointed. "I am very sorry for so disgracing your Majesty like that. I would only beg your forgiveness."

"Find yourself some young, foolish, lover before the world ruins them. Save someone the hassle of meeting ruder men."

"I…" the Ryussian seemed unable to meet Yugi's eyes or even himself, throat clamming.

"Another time your Grace, another life," Yugi repeated hurriedly patting his shoulder as she passed, "and you could have me in the fields right this second while the birds and all manner of gods watched."

It was an utterly obscene thing to say but nothing really stirred in Yugi as she said it however Timaeus sharpened his breath and seemed to hue twisting after the Gem Faher as she escaped from behind the curtains.

Yugi clacked, clipped, from the niche back, instinctively, towards her rooms. Whether it was the obscenity of what had fallen out of her mouth, the shock or simply the pressing, debilitating, effect of having this heaped onto what was already a disastrous day she couldn't construe. She wasn't in any condition to.

She was late for dinner, she had already been so before Timaeus had found her, and unlatching her earrings, too fast on her toes and too breathless Yugi couldn't… she…

She couldn't make the hall. She couldn't. The sun was slipping back, the sickle moon was rising, her promised hour with Atemu coming on fast and… Gods she couldn't manage another encounter, another question, another brush with a man of any sort. She just wanted her bed to rise up to meet her, she wanted a secret moment to sob and scream and curse in all the ways Sultana's were not supposed to for fear of losing their dignity.

She had her earrings in her palm, felt the crown but didn't dare slip it off her pinned hair yet before reaching the rooms where she intended to strip down to the bare skin and sob a while.

She fumbled, lost her step a little, and mind all a stutter of past and present woes started to realize someone would come looking for her if she didn't send off word. Oh gods the whole hassle of it, the new detail she had to check off, seemed immediately too much. She was falling over inside herself, a beast too tired to toil another step in the field, unable.

She shuddered, sighing, and almost cried but as she rounded the corner back to her rooms she saw a girl rushing towards the grand hall almost tumbling over herself.

"Pardon me your Majesty!" She ducked, bowing, late.

"Girl!" Yugi caught it in her throat turning after her as they passed each other. "Wait!"

"Yes your Majesty?" She pivoted flushing red with breathlessness, half panting.

She was one of the foreign courtiers who came to visit, to make allies and learn pandering skills before embarrassing themselves at home in their own more personally dangerous courts. This was her traineeship to being a lady in her own home, somewhere her father could put her when she was young and stupid so she wouldn't cause a scene at home from inexperience. He would take her back eventually.

That was the practical element but it led into the physical fact that she was pale, she was blonde, she was luscious and pretty. Yugi grasped that, inspected her in the second's pause she took and deciding, in a mindless rush, that she could turn it to his advantage latched onto her.

"Would you take a message for me to the Sultan?" She began.

She paled, reddened, her complexion giving things that the native girl's did not in their cheeks. Yugi had learnt a long time ago how easily she colored and how to strain it all back even from her eyes, though they still often told on her, but this girl had not. She was blooming and silly. Atemu might, Yugi supposed, find her sympathetic.

"I need you to-"

Atemu beckoned subtly, from the head table, and sneaking past on her way to her seat Mana'jet came about the back of his seat just as the slaves started to file in the trays towards the rows.

"Where is she?" He whispered over his shoulder tartly.

"The Sultana is a moment behind us," Mana'jet assured, patting his shoulder. "Fear not Brother."

"Aye, right," he sighed, letting her pass as he reached for his drink.

That moment passed however, as did the next, and as the cutlery began to clatter slightly out of tune, discordant and not universally applied, Timaeus shambled in. He bowed to Atemu on his dais, looked sick as a dying dog, and darting like a startled hare lumbered his tall proud form into hiding at a seat with spectacular peculiarity.

Still, however, there was no Yugi.

Atemu grumbled, cocking one leg over the other, distracted by it and waiting for the insult he was sure would follow. He didn't think the witch would go back on her word, especially not a promise for a good confrontation but if the Sultana was decided to make a scene out of the whole affair of Atemu taking her to bed then…. God Atemu could only imagine the witch would find some way to turn him into a laughingstock this evening. It set him ill at ease, ruffled his intentions and vaguely milling plans he'd been trying to form.

Another moment, another hardy sip perhaps too deep to be safe and Atemu fretted.

A blonde girl, a European, danced in round the screens and curtains about the main door and making her beeline along the outside wall seemed filled with nervous purpose. Atemu noticed her if only because she was standing in a sea of cushions and seated lords or perhaps it was the rather lustrous deep tone to her dress.

She began, he noticed after another sip, to wander very close and then, frowning with interest, he found her mounting the dais with her head down as she passed his brothers.

His stomach grumbled uneasily. By every sordid fucking god if the Gem Faher was up to something-

"Majesty?" She announced herself, suddenly beside him, almost startling him from his building, suspicious, rage. She bowed very deep, kept her eyes down. "I am very sorry to interrupt you."

"What's this then milady?" He supposed cordially, tenuously.

"Her Majesty sent me," she explained, a halo of little blonde curls staring up at Atemu. "She wished me to tell you, with the greatest apologies, that she is indisposed to dinner this evening and has taken to recover in her rooms."

"Oh?"

"She wished me to assure you that," she paused, seemed to blush, "that she would be waiting up for you this evening eagerly nonetheless."

"Ha!" Atemu snorted before his could stop himself, disparaged and infuriated in a sucking cycle that spat and ate at itself. He sighed, shoulders falling, took a swig and realized the girl was still there waiting to be dismissed.

Damn cad of a witch making a scene of absence….

He sighed, regarded the thick blonde curls of the girl, and mulling it, vengefully, decided if the Sultana had a scene to make than he ought make one of his own.

"Thank you milady," he raised his glass, "you can now reward yourself with a proper meal for your errand. Though I fear your seat may already be taken."

She raised her coifed head barely, glancing over the table, and laughing weakly agreed.

"I may have to stand your Majesty," she joked.

"Nonsense," he chuckled, "why not sit by me then? If her Majesty is ill I shall be wanting for kind company tonight."

"Oh no Sire I couldn't!" She rasped, jerking her head back down. It was completely obscene in its own way, disrespectful and unheard of. Poor foreign girl probably supposed the queen's savage in-laws might scalp her for the infraction when they saw her seated beside Atemu.

"Nonsense," he repeated jovially, "I insist. Sit! Sit!"

To hell with Yugi and the appearance of Atemu as preserver of her honor!

Atemu drank too much, got a little too vengeful, and as dinner, as the dancing, wore on across the evening he couldn't quite find the will or the courage to haul himself off to his cold bed. He could picture the awaiting argument, the struggle, the swearing, the smugness, he expected to be confronted with by the sharp tongued harpy, the tiny wristed doll, he called a wife.

Yet it was not guilt, nervousness, embarrassment or desire in his gut. He did not rail against impulses. He was utterly justified in his position, his rights and utterly unconcerned.

Furthermore he was not nostalgic or lonely for Anzu still. Such prolonged grief was weak and unbecoming in any man let alone a king. He might not be able to agree to marry another, save now he had Yugi out of sheer survivalism, but that was, he convinced himself, out of a religious devotion to the customs of the one true God. He was upholding tenants.

He could return to his chambers whenever he saw fit without any care for the witch; hell let the witch wait for him!

He was not in a state of any description save arousal, basic and simple, when he stole the gently wet, warm and tipsy blonde courtier away to a secluded hall just form the dancing where the music was still audible. He was himself, better he was growling, when he pressed her up into him and for the first time since his wedding stole a proper kiss.

She kissed back, tossed her arms round him, was so much more responsive, so like he remembered from his boyhood. She was proper to her sex, natural, made him warm and sighing he felt more healed to himself as he pressed into her.

Atemu felt the woman.

She…

He kissed harder but his head fell a fraction out of clarity. His hands were hot but his brain wouldn't allow itself completely to fog over.

She was a courtier so much like Anzu.

So like Anzu who was sagging in the cold ground with their dead boy.

He distracted himself, yanking, back.

The cut of her dress was foreign, the press of her laces inviting, and as he pressed his hips into her gown it rumpled as she purred behind the curtain. She laughed, twinkled half tipsy, and cupping up her cheeks he kissed her.

He thought, in a surge, that he would dismiss the white witch's services altogether. To hell with Yugi and those cold little hands he distrusted.

His gut hurt, his head followed.

The way Yugi looked at him and the way Atemu didn't want the witch to look at him…

He'd never liked the look of the Gem Faher's painted face. He still didn't. Everything he did was still selfless, still for kingdom, now his one romantic act of marrying Anzu had rotted into crumbling dust.

He didn't lust. He couldn't, he wouldn't, knowing in his heart how utterly wicked, how deplorable, how converted that devil worshipping trollop was. Yugi sat crowned, wreathed, as sovereign of every god awful curse that had ever come over the palace because it was her natural habitat. Atemu had always known that.

He would remarry again he decided in an impulsive flourish. God he'd do it just to escape those tiny glares… The witch would conquer over his Christian goodness that way but at least he would have a dozen waxen sons, a quiver of heirs, with another beautiful well intentioned white woman. Like this one perhaps. To hell to surrendering, demeaning, himself with the creature he accepted out of sheer survivalism.

The filthy pagan didn't-

Atemu paused, hands stroking subconsciously down the slender prize pressed into the wall as the torrent in his mind crashed off towards new realization. The courtier sighed, head back, curls loose and gave him the honeyed eyes of a hungry woman.

Wait…

A generation of blood imbued instincts riled in sudden insult as, in the change of the wind, Atemu's inner beast caught the scent of something amiss in his little European peacock.

He concluded, saw suddenly, that he'd been had.

He growled and, hand moving quite outside his notice, wasn't truly cognizant of pinning the tiny thing to the stone by her neck until she gasped.

She tightened like a bow string, hands flying up and suddenly sickly pale began to stutter.

"Majesty?"

"How much?" Atemu spat.

"M-majesty…?"

His hand tightened, the press doubled as his body folded over hers and his tight teeth came within view from his snared back lips.

"How much did she promise you?" Atemu seethed. "The Queen. She ordered you to do this didn't she? Didn't she?'

"Ma-majesty I-I don't-" She fumbled uselessly.

"The Queen ordered you to distract me." Atemu challenged in realization, tasting it, fingers flexing.

"N-no! I-" she couldn't even bring herself to finish it, the thought choked off.

Heaving her back, laces and all, Atemu growled and peeling free left the traitorous strumpet to sag in place inching boneless down the wall till on her knees she seemed quite inconsolable. He was too angry, to thick set with bloodlust to even notice her.

The lighter doors into the Queen's sitting rooms exploded.

Yugi scampered, hauling herself up from the chair where, till a moment ago, she had been obviously peacefully aligned. Content, no doubt, her sullen new husband would be off for the night consorting with the hired help. Yugi had no intention or expectation, Atemu saw plainly, of filling up their wedding bed tonight.

"You witch!" He boomed before he quite knew what else he wanted to say.

"Majesty?" Yugi flexed, paling, wrapping the blankets up round herself tighter.

"How dare you!" Atemu snapped grabbing at one end of the pelt to yank it hard out of the Gem-Faher's hands. The blanket came free out of Yugi's grasp with a gasp, a tight sound, and throwing it onto the floor Atemu left the tiny thing very underdressed in her nightgown. "How dare you embarrass me like that! In front of everyone!"

"What in the name of every hell has gotten into you?" She breathed, hissing and panicked all at once as she took a step back. "What are you talking about?"

"The blonde one! The bitch!" Atemu raged. "You paid some harlot to distract me to dodge your responsibilities! You cuckolded me!"

"Ha!" Yugi snorted, wrapping her arms round herself defensively. "Quite the opposite I should think by the sounds of that!"

"I know it was you!"

"I don't have the faintest idea what you mean," Yugi squeezed her upper arms willfully though she kept their space stark, "I've paid no one to do anything. Who the king consorts with is none of my business. I have no sway over what you do with your nethers."

"Did you think I'd go for just any of them then?" Atemu snapped. "Any white little miss will do for me you suppose?"

"I did nothing," Yugi hissed, buckling inward to emphasize the syllables. "You're a raving lunatic. Though I'm starting to think I should've payed out a score of lovers to woo you now. Considering you read every gust of wind as my wickedness why would I ever want to consort with you?"

"You agreed to this." Atemu boomed, index finger jabbing towards the ground. "No one forced you."

"I did," she nodded chin high and proud, "but I will not lower myself to this. If you want a son go beget one from someone else because you're mad to think I want any part in you. I love this country, I love these people, but I'd rather die than-"

"And you think I want you?" Atemu laughed viciously. "It's your fault she's dead! That my son's dead!"

"I should be so flattered," Yugi laughed with gasping breathlessness, "that you think me so powerful that I am the sole cause of everything dreadful that has ever happened to you! If I could ruin you do you really think I would be here with you? If I could have you drowned at sea and flung on the rocks and Abraxas on the throne don't you think I would? I'd ruin you this veryheartbeat if one god or another would let me!"

She laughed but seemed almost in tears as gesturing grandly Yugi swept her arms before him as if to illustrate the marrow of the rocks she would have the Sultan torn asunder upon. Yet the intensity of her proclamation exhausted itself and all Yugi's fire with it.

Atemu was… He grit his teeth, hissing, but was so distraught at the memory of tiny feet and wet hands he couldn't bring himself to rail at the witch. His fingers dug themselves in his hair and moaning he spat towards the carpet trying to breathe. Gods…his boy….

"I'm sorry," Yugi moaned, "I'm sorry they're gone. I'm sorry but I can't… I didn't… I can't give you anything. I can't do anything. I can't- I can't even…"

Atemu dug his nails into his scalp, teeth gritted, and so bitter as he was he could hardly move, hardly open his eyes. He was aware however of how Yugi split somehow and collapsing onto her knees the Gem-Faher curled inward burying her face into her palms.

She choked high and thin, erupting into a hoarse moaning sob before collapsing utterly into loud, broken, tears. Atemu couldn't breathe, arms losing all strength as they surrendered themselves to slump into his sides. He watched, unable to really speak, as pushing her forehead into the carpets under her hair Yugi cried high and thick and wretchedly. Miserable; the witch was utterly ruined by misery and yet…

Atemu found no joy in the victory of Yugi sobbing hysterically at his feet.

There was nothing inside him, no happiness, no vengeance, no glory, no pain… some vast horrible ache of numbness had consumed him and agonized Atemu had nothing left to pleasure himself with. Anzu was dead, his boy was dead, his father had died hating him for nothing to show less than a season later and now the witch cried, hiccupping desperately, because she'd failed Atemu's demanding, impossible, standards.

Yugi hated him, oh Atemu knew, and she hated her life here, her existence, now. She was crying for failure yet Atemu sensed too Yugi was crying for her own wretched state. Yugi was horrified with her own condition, her own fortune, Yugi was horrified she had been saddled with Atemu. Atemu was, effectively to this little creature, a curse so horrible the wretched thing could stand nothing anymore but to unlace into screaming cries open mouthed against the floor.

He couldn't stand it.

Atemu left.

So…uh…. That was intense? I guess it all had to come to a head.

Next time: some things stay the same but, more importantly, some things change. Some people change…