Hi! I'm back again. On my gosh, I got readers! I'm happy and you spur me to finish this translation! This one is shorter but after all it is a filler as I have to make the years pass somehow. I decided that I'm going to post the third and last chapter in 2 parts, as I did with chapter 1 and 2, so you can get a faster update. Therefore there are only other 2 chapters left. Next one is going to be as bad as the previous one, just to warn you…

Ok: I don't know why but this blasted thing won't let me put a point between 2 and II in the chapter title. So use your imagination.

2 II

- I think it's enough, your Majesty.

Only two weeks had passed since her father's death and her brother's incarceration and Tamara already discovered that wearing the crown wasn't as she always envisioned it.

Flagg placed lightly a hand on the queen's wrist that was reaching for the wine filled cup.

- If you keep it on, you'll be ill in front of the whole court.

That last sentence was whispered in the monarch's ear. She didn't look in his direction but let her arm go lax on the table, cleaning pointlessly her fingers on the table cloth: she hadn't even touched the food on her plate. Not the roasted potatoes or the boar nor any of the delicacies the cook prepared just for her, to try to stimulate her appetite, so low in these last weeks. That evening, as all the previous ones, the queen eat only some bread and olives, more to have something to do with her hands than because she was hungry. There was the wine to fill her belly and warm her blood, red wine the queen drunk in huge quantity. The cook who once upon a time used to hide the honey buns from her fat sticky fingers, now prepared what used to be her favourite foods that got instead returned to the kitchen untouched. The illness she suffered before her coronation seemed to have changed her dietary habits: now she could eat only simple food like broth and boiled meat without feeling sick. It wasn't the only eccentricity she acquired seemly overnight: she had always been a sloppy and usually dirty child but now she has a maniacal obsession with cleanness and order. During the first week of her reign she put to work the whole castle serving stuff to sweep, mot and scrub every surface, especially her rooms. Every windows had been washed, as every curtain and tapestry. Bedsheets has to be changed every day, as well as her clothes and she begin every day with a morning bath. There was who whispered she would surely catch her death bathing so often, those were the people who took a bath once a year and unwillingly, and in the following months and years as the queen's health declined and she begun to be more and more pale and sickly they seemed to be proven right. But by that time nobody would care for her anymore. The cook would soon stop to tempt her with tantalizing food to get her to gain weight, the maids would stop to be scandalized by been thrown out of her rooms, becoming progressively more sloppy in their service and leaving the queen alone, ignoring deliberately her orders. The servants and the guards would leave her to the isolation she obviously preferred, to her hysterics and her tantrum fits. Not even the noblemen of her council would look her in the eyes, always clouded by the abuse of wine, disgusted by the weakness displayed by the girl-queen they celebrated after king Roland The Good's death. Few people, too few, would stay by her side bound by their duty, like the always-attending cupbearer and loyal Dennis and they were the only ones who noticed how the anxiety made her hands tremble and how pain and fear had made her wan out and had hallowed her cheeks.

But that was yet to come, for now everybody at court was trying to gain her favour and the most influential young men of the kingdom were trying to attract her attention in hope to sign a betrothal contract. That was making the sorcerer seethe in anger and jealousy. He expressed nothing of what he was thinking, nobody yet realized how the power balance had heavily turned from the throne to him and that they have been bowing to the wrong person. When they recognized it, I'm sorry to say, some would assert how it was a relief that the kingdom was run by a strong willed person while the queen spent her time drunk. There was who, in the council, had suggested that a marriage was what the kingdom needed but these someone were promptly silenced by the frighteningly mellifluous voice of the royal sorcerer turned First Advisor and Lord Protector of the kingdom who was always zealous in remaining them how queen Tamara's mother had died of blood loss during a difficult delivery and how it was better for the kingdom to have a living queen than jeopardize her life and the life of a possible future heir. And since the queen's advisors were all men and knew nothing about babies and childbirth they would yield to the sorcerer's greater knowledge. There had been someone who, more lewdly and very stupidly, suggested that what the queen really needed was a man between her legs to warm her frigid blood and quieted her hysterics. The man had died of food poisoning in the throes of a horrible pain.

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That stupid boy was smiling at her again. The son of a baronet who believed himself so influential to get for his firstborn the second seat on the queen's left, so arrogant as to believe he could catch the queen's attention and so ambitious as to dream a crown for his son.

So foolish as to believe it possible.

The boy's attempts went right over the queen's head who was watching him with unfocused eyes and giving him only empty smiles. All her attention was reserved for the golden cup in front of her, full of wine just as she liked it. It was fortuitous for Tamara that she hadn't even realized that the whelp was attempting to court her, all the sorcerer' jealousy and rage was aimed at him only: for the last hours he had entertained himself imagining how satisfying it would be to torture the brat to death, spill his entrails, enjoy of his rasping cries… The boy shot an exasperated look at his father when the queen mangled his name for the umpteenth time before she got up swaying and announced it was time for her to retire. Flagg got up as well from his seat at her right, silent as a shadow, and offered her his arm. Tamara gripped it and let him escort her outside the dining hall where the feast went on undisturbed and uncaring of her leaving it.

The sorcerer, vexed by the evening events, dragged the girl to her bedroom and let her nearly asleep body fell on the bedcovers before leaving the royal rooms passing in front of the two soldiers slackly guarding its doors. The maids, upon seeing her in a drunk stupor, untied her dress and corset and laid on the bed her nightgown knowing that in the morning she would be under the covers, her dress thrown on the floor or on a chair. They knew by now that their queen couldn't bear to be touched and the first time she snap out of her drunken state and realized her maid were undressing her for the night she had screamed so loudly that the guards outside rushed in fearing an intruder. The maids had been dismissed and the two guards who had seen her with only her petticoats and undershirt on, had been beheaded in the Obelisk square.

Flagg came back during the small hours of the night: he wanted her awake and at least moderately sober. Tamara once nearly puked all over him and he wasn't in a hurry to repeat the experience. The voluminous white dress she had worn at dinner laid on the floor along her petticoat. A silk stocking had slipped from the bed to the floor as well and the queen was snoring lightly under the covers. The sorcerer blew out the candles, undressed and pulled back the bedsheets uncovering his young lover. She was sleeping on her back wearing only a light undershirt open to show her belly and one naked breast, and her left stocking but without garter. He told her to wait for him naked and he had to admit she had tried to obey even if dazed by the abuse of alcohol. The anger he nursed all night faded away and his mind, that had been full of blood and torture, filled with fantasies of moans and embraces and her trembling flash around his member.

Tamara woke abruptly, smothered under the sorcerer's body weight and pierced by spasms of pains coming from her underbelly as he moved quickly over and inside her, uncaring. With a complaining whimper she raised her hands and pushed against his chest, to try and stop him or at least push him back enough to breath but he gripped her wrists, immobilizing them at the side of her head and in few violent thrusts he came. He hadn't finished, she knew it well: soon, terribly soon, he would be ready to take her again and then again until he would be completely satisfied. Sometimes he even stayed all night just to wake her up before dawn to take her one last time. For now he left her, turning on his side to observe her. The only source of light was the fireplace but in the dimness it was easy to recognize the outline of his head and the glint of his eyes. The queen lowered with shaking hands the undershirt he lifted, closed her legs and raised to her neck the covers. She wished to scold him for not even waking her but she couldn't find the nerve to do so and then he spoke to her first.

- Old Gorge's son kept on staring at you during the whole feast.

A hand slipped under the covers and inside her shirt, seizing one of her breasts and tightening the grip progressively until it became painful.

- I didn't noticed it! I swear I did nothing wrong, nothing to lead him on! I don't even know who you are speaking about!

The hand become kinder and its fingers brushed and twirled the nipple, getting a timid moan of pleasure out of her.

- And this is the only reason why I'm not angry with you.

He told her and drew near her even more, making their bodies line up to kiss her. Flagg's kisses were always invasive and aggressive and didn't call for Tamara's active participation. She merely let him do as he pleased, trying to relax as much as she could under that assault to appease him in the hopes to be rewarded with one of that fleeting moments when he became gentle with her, moments that made his cruelty bearable. He kissed her thoroughly as he finished undressing her and then his mouth joined his left hand on her breasts while his right hand went down between her legs and touched her and penetrate her and tormented her until she was incoherent and deaf to her own moans, blind to everything but the pleasure he was giving her. Afterwards, for the first time, he took her hand and guided it in the exploration of his body. He placed it over his hairless and smooth chest and then lower and Tamara finally got the chance to touch that part of him that gave her pain nearly all the times it had been inside her. The sorcerer made her wrap her fingers around it and guided her hand in the first uncertain movements and that thing went from been small and soft to hard and stiff and so big that Tamara marvelled at the thought it could fit inside her, at least now she knew why it hurt. Soon he was ready to do it again and hastily spread out her legs, laid over her and kissing her he penetrated her but displaying more care than before. Supporting his weight with one hand he lifted her leg to his waist and with a surge of relief she indulged in his unspoken request, wrapping her legs around him. This was the position she favoured above all others, even if in this way he trusted deeply making her sore for hours. For some reason when he let her understand he wanted to be hugged and she complied wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, threading her fingers through his hair he become… gentle. His thrusts weren't violent, his caresses didn't leave behind bruises and sometimes he would kiss her bow, brush her hair and call her his dove. The queen lived for these moments, when he behaved like a lover and not like a torturer, when he gave her pleasure instead of pain. In these precious moments she let herself believe he loved her as she loved him.

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Time lost its meaning to Tamara. Every day was the same. She would wake up and drink a cup filled with wine. She would have breakfast with a honeybun and another cup filled with wine. She would listen to the reports of the council with a cup in hand and the cupbearer who would keep it filled with wine. By lunchtime she would need to lay down to get over the first hungover of the day. The afternoons were spent in Flagg's company and the umpteenth tax law. The cupbearer would be with them but Tamara would feel uneasy anyway: the boy would leave from time to time, to get more wine and Flagg, the majority of times, would keep going as usual but sometimes he would take advantage of the cupbearer's absence to steal a kiss and to caress her levelling a burning, greedy look at her. Over time he had become cruel and uncaring of her comfort and pleasure. Tamara was starting to think he had no respect for her nor for her rule. Flagg was king in all but name, sometimes she was so drunk he had to guide her hand in signing the royal decrees. At dinner she would eat little and drink a lot of wine: being drunk was the only way she knew for coping with what was awaiting her the night after the maids left her and she laid down in bed.

Once upon a time she used to look in the mirror and see an overweight girl but now her dresses had to be continuously fixed to adapt to her weight loss, even the dresses made after her coronation. If she were to look in the mirror now she would see a girl on the way to becoming too thin, with prominent cheek bones and a face that could have been almost pretty if it weren't for the lips set permanently in a sad grimace and red rimmed eyes caused by too many sleepless nights and too many wine cups.

But Tamara had stopped looking in the mirror a long time ago. She didn't want to see the face of someone who betrayed her family for a man who covered her body in bruises and filled her eyes with tears. She believed she deserved the pain he inflicted upon her and she was prisoner of a shame loop. She dispraised herself for betraying Peter and therefore she accepted the brutal embraces of the sorcerer as a form of self punishment. She felt ashamed for what he keep doing to her and she felt ashamed for feeling ashamed: it was what she deserved and she believed, from the bottom of her tormented heart, that whatever he could do to her wasn't enough to atone for her crime. Every time she would wish for him to stop she would get angry with herself: it was what she choose when she picked Flagg over her own brother, she had prepared her bed of thorns and justice demanded for her to lay on it.

Once she asked Flagg why they didn't marry. He had roared with laughter, then he kissed and took her with more ferocity than usual and afterwards, when he was still inside her, he whispered against her sweaty bow that he didn't need to marry her in order to have her.

- But one day I will have to marry. I will need to have children to inherit the crown, what would we do then?

He answered saying she didn't need to worry about it, he would take care of the matter when the time came, that he would find her a husband who would not bother her in the bedroom. Flagg had discovered a well of burning jealousy in himself. Tamara wasn't ever going to marry, she would die long before that, and the moment he had been waiting for centuries was coming fast and swift and it would be a glorious day. She wouldn't outgrow her teen years, let alone reach the marriageable age. However the thought of a husband was enough to twist his guts. He discovered jealousy felt like a bad stomach-ache that made him cold and hot at the same time. It wasn't at all a pleasant feeling. There were days he wished with a burning passion the queen's death to get rid of the embarrassing feelings she was able to rouse in him without even trying. An inexplicable lust that would catch him in the worst moments possible and that compelled him to visit her bedroom in the depth of the night or to approach her in the daylight. A foolish and dangerous behaviour. Then there were the days when he would waste his precious time in thinking of a way to spare her life whilst making the kingdom sink into anarchy and blood. A way to take her with him when the time to leave would came, a pleasurable memento of his victory, as long as she would last. Those days were becoming more frequent and that alarmed him: it meant to put to risk centuries of careful plotting and deceptions. And yet… In those days he would touch her surreptitiously in the daylight thinking about how nice it would be to do the same without having to hide his lust for her and he would call her "dearest" and "my dove" while in bed. During the worst days, the ones he wished her dead, remembering his foolish contingency plans made him rage and drove him to unwind his fury on his lover, becoming brutal in his lovemaking, his eyes shining with cruel malice as he licked Tamara's tears from her cheeks, a feral grin on his face that betrayed his inhuman nature.

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