Neko Hime 17
Final Retribution
A hazy mist had trapped itself between the cliffs and the sea that held the city of Palas. From shore to bluff there was nothing but gray that swirled down the silent streets and canals. Like a veil of mourning it hid the faces of the people from each other. It silenced the blows of the smith's hammers and the loud cries of the bazaar. No one was building. No one was selling. The city rested in a gray fog.
Laying upon the soft sheets of her bed Eries stared unseeing out the window. The morning's mist seemed to have entered the palace and found its way into her head for her thoughts were clouded and jumbled. She'd lain for almost a week in her room while a fever boiled its way through her veins. The pain raged in her stomach, in her head and in her heart. Beads of sweat slid down her brow and stung her tearless eyes. She didn't bother to brush them away. It hurt to move. It hurt to think. She was sick, and she didn't want to get well.
Her door was locked from the inside keeping out the help of the handmaidens and her sister. And more importantly keeping away the doctors they brought. Eries didn't want to see them; she didn't need to see them. The sickness that now overtook her had built up for years. A mass of poisons in her mind, body, and soul. Poisons held back by her fantasies for a better future, for a better life. Now there were no more idle dreams. Folken was dead. He who had loved her was dead.
Through tiny snippets of conversation she managed to catch Eries had learned that Folken's body was finally being put to rest back in Fanelia. She would never see it. She would never see Folken again.
And Folken, poor Folken, had lain for nearly a week in a pool of his own blood on a cold hard floor in Zaibach before his body had been moved at all. He'd laid alone. Laid where he'd fallen. Stiffened and rotting while the politicians negotiated the return of his body to his home.
No one had wanted to touch the body of a Draconian. No one wanted to be cursed by being brushed with the black wings. So the King of Fanelia, Folken's little brother, had to go himself. He had to leave his kingdom, which was only starting to be reformed, and journey back behind enemy lines to bring his brother home. It broke her heart.
Eries grasped tighter in her hands the crème cloth that Folken had dropped in his lab. It still smelled like him. A smell like metal and rain. The smell, the cloth, the memories; they were all that she had left of him.
What she would have done for one more day with him. One more hour. Even a minute more to tell him once again how much she had loved him. How much he meant to her.
A loud rapping came at her door and Eries did not answer. She assumed it was Millerna wanting to 'doctor' her big sister, or a handmaiden with food that would be uneaten.
"Eries Hime," a masculine voice came from the other side of the door. Eries sat straight up as the voice cut through her like a knife. "Open this door."
Not wanting to but knowing she must, Eries made her way on unsteady feet to the door. King Aston stood outside and he stood alone. Eries was taken aback. His eyes had regained that maliciously cunning glint that informed her of his impending recovery. If not for the air lingering weakness that still hung about him Eries was sure he would spring and attack her.
He barged into the room not waiting for permission and dropped onto the bed with a mighty huff. "You look almost as bad as I do," he chuckled.
"I've been ill," Eries explained warily and shut the door.
He laughed at her. "Don't give me that bullshit, Eries."
"What do you want from me, King Aston?" she frowned.
"Well, since you did ask, part of me wants you thrown in the dungeon, wants to see you hanging from the gallows and wants to see your body torn up in a thousand pieces and fed to the fish. But that's only part of me. The other part of me, that silly little part that for some damn reason loves you, would like an explanation before I call the guards in here and have all those things done."
She backed up against the wall. Afraid of him. She could try to act innocent, deny what he was about to accuse her of. But she knew his mind, and knew there would be no escape. Her eyes drifted from him to the crème cloth that was still lying on the bed, it was proof enough for everything. Aston followed her gaze.
"Well, what have we here?" He mocked picking the cloth up. Eries could sense Aston's smell mingling in the fibers threatening to destroy that last remnant of Folken. "Isn't this the cloth that Zaibach defect used to wear?"
Eries didn't answer.
"Now what would you be doing with it? Has my little kitty been a naughty girl?" His voice dripped with sarcasm.
Part of her wanted to tear the cloth away from him and run away. And part of her wanted to wrap the cloth around Aston's fat neck and strangle the life from him. Strangle the smug grin off his face. She did neither.
"Don't think you're so damn clever, Eries. I know what you've been up to. You and that Strategos. I have eyes all over this castle. They know everything. Even things you don't think they know. They've told me about your little encounter. It wasn't too hard to figure out the rest. Except why? Why play the double agent?"
"I loved him," she whispered.
Aston laughed at her again. "You loved him? You have to have a heart for that, Eries. But then again, I could see where you might get confused, after all, no one has ever loved you."
"That's not true!" Eries protested her lower lip trembling as she struggled not to cry at his harsh words.
"How could they, Eries? You're the vilest little creature I've ever come across. You're not a human and you're not a beastgirl either. So that makes you a nothing. You're a nobody, Eries. And no one could ever love you."
"Mother loved me!" she cried. "And Marlene and Millerna, too."
He chuckled at her words and Eries loathed him more than anything right then. She hated him because he sat there so calm while she got shaken up by his words. Because after all these years he still controlled her. "Your mother regretted having you. She told me herself. And Marlene thought as I do. They never loved you."
"There's Millerna."
"Has she ever told you?"
Eries shook her head and a triumphant look spread across Aston's face. "So tell me, did this Strategos ever say that he loved you?"
Eries, very slowly, nodded. "He loved me. He told me himself. And I loved him. So you were wrong, King Aston. Somebody has loved me. Folken loved me."
"No, Eries," Aston said gravely. "He didn't love you. He used you. He used you to get just what he wanted."
"No!" Eries felt the tears brim up in her eyes. "You're a liar. You don't know anything!"
"Oh, really? You gave him confidential information, didn't you? Information about Asturia. Information about our allies. He asked and you delivered. Gained your sympathy then stole your body and your soul, led you along on a leash. He made you his little bitch. He might have said he loved you but just because it's what you wanted to hear. He never loved you."
"Shut up!" Eries screamed tearing at her own hair. She looked to rotting man sitting on her bed and hated him. Violently she yanked open her desk draw and pulled from it a full bottle of poison and slowly approached the bed, a dangerous look in her eye.
"You look thirsty," Eries said. "You should drink something. I have a little bottle of vino here."
"Get that away from me," Aston said. "You're little trick may have broken me down this far, but I'm not as foolish as you think."
Eries smirked. "Daddy, you need to take your medication. Things won't get better until you do." She pushed him backwards on the bed and tipped the vial to his mouth letting a little bit of the liquid dribble out wetting his lips. Aston's turned his head away clamping his mouth firmly shut. He tried to push the bottle away, but he was no longer strong enough to overpower her.
Eries climbed up fully on the bed and straddled his body pinning his arms down with her knees. He looked up at her with terror overtaking his eyes. The same sort of look she used to give to him. It didn't stop her now. It hadn't stopped him then.
She slid her fingers between his lips opening them enough to let the poison dribble into her cheeks and filter into his mouth between his teeth. Aston tried to spit it out, cough it up but she clamped one slender hand over his lips and the other on his nose. The need for breath finally made him swallow.
Eries crawled off the bed leaving Aston to his fate. She smoothed her skirt and pushed her pale blond hair back behind her ears. Without even turning to look at him again she left the room.
+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
It was a calm and blue day. The sea breeze had blown the morning's gray fog away. And Millerna was standing on the balcony outside her father's study. She gazed quietly out over Asturia to where a blue pillar of light streaked the sky. Eries approached her little sister wanting to take in the moment of quiet before Aston's body was discovered. She'd told the maids he was napping on her bed. Poor man, he would die in his sleep.
"How are you feeling?" Millerna asked.
"I'm feeling great." Eries smiled, the grin licking her face from ear to ear. She wrapped her arm around Millerna's back and felt her little sister lean into the hug. "It's all been made right."
The End
