I'm sorry for the mistakes that you'll find as I had trouble translating the grammar right: it's not easy to write the "future in the past" tense… If I got it wrong I just hope you'll understand anyway.

AN: For future reference: *1 foot= 0,3048 meters (therefore 90 meters should be more than 270 feet while 30 meters should be 90 feet but I've never been good at math).

3. II

Peter had worked at his escape with growing urgency in the last five years of his imprisonment. His plan was simple but clever: pull out threads from the napkins coming with his three daily meals, braid them together in a thin but strong rope using the loom of his mother's dollhouse that he had Peyna deliver to him and climb down the ninety meters* separating his cell window from the cobblestones of the Niddle square. What he was going to do once he was fee again he still didn't know, but he was going to improvise and to hope for the best.

The day his sister was crowned queen of Delain he had watched the ceremony from the single small window of his prison. He took notice of the way Tamara had clung to Flagg and he knew it couldn't be a good omen for the beginning of her rule.

When he found the golden heart-shaped pendant belonging to Leven Valara and the letter he wrote with his blood in which he accused Flagg the sorcerer of killing his wife and framing him for her murderer, trapping him in the cell at the Niddle top, Peter felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, realizing how much danger all Delain was in. He had had confirmation of the evil nature of the monster whispering in his sister's ear, a monster who five centuries earlier had plotted to take out of the picture an inconvenient heir to the throne to put in charge Alan the Mad, a king who had dragged the kingdom on the brink of destruction.

The rhythm kept by the executioner axe, faster and faster in the following years until it become nearly wild during the fifth year of his imprisonment, convinced him to increase the quantity of stolen threads, tattering his napkins edges and making him live in constant fear that the news of such anomaly would reach the sorcerer.

The rope was still to short but he felt he couldn't wait to finish it. Something in his bones, like a presentiment, was telling him that his time was ebbing away fast and this feeling, coupled with the nightmare he kept on having every night about Flagg bowed over a shining crystal whispering maliciously his name, was pushing him to try to escape. He could only hope that Dennis and Ben, his best friend since childhood, would be able to come out with something in case things went wrong.

Peter couldn't know how right his instinct was: some minutes before his escape attempt Flagg was going to foresee his plan and to rush to the Niddle main door armed with his double axe, the one he used to do his bloody job many centuries before when he was called Bill Hinch the most fared and bloodthirsty executioner in the history of Delain. Dennis and Ben, along with Naomi and her trustworthy dog Frisky who guided Peter's best friend from the exiled rebels camp to the capitol, would save the prince's life by piling up at the tower feet a heap of royal napkins, the same ones that Peter had used for years to create his mean of escape, breaking his fall when the rope would snap at thirty meters* from the cobblestones.

But neither Peter who had weaved and fretted for five years nor Flagg who in the course of the same five years had enjoyed an absolute power over the kingdom by exerting an absolute control over the queen rising the taxes to absurd levels and executing summarily any who dared to opposite him, could have known how events were going to unfold.

§§§

When Flagg came back empty-handed from his hunt of the rebels, Tamara panicked. The sorcerer had the habit to vent on her skin his frustrations and the queen pictured for herself nights of pain and tears, perhaps even been taken from behind with Flagg's hand around her throat strangling her. However, once alone he informed her with a raspy voice that he wasn't going to visit her that night nor the following one. The cold he suffered camping in the humid and frigid forests caused him to catch a bad cold and a light fever. Moreover, since he didn't find the rebels there where they should have been, he begun to have a recurring nightmare he could never remember upon waking: he woke up screaming, his hands clutching his left eye that would burn terribly. Therefore he didn't wanted to succumb to sleep and have that dream in her bed: he didn't want her to realize he had bad dreams like everybody else.

Flagg was never ill and so that fever was like the insult added to the injury of not finding that trice damned riffraff composed by noblemen in exile and rebels. The cold and the fever had been easily cured once he had had open access to his laboratory again but the rage and the uneasiness tormenting him were more difficult to dispel and he just knew that if he were to go to Tamara's bed he would hurt her a lot worse than usual and, he decided, it was better to avoid something like that. The sorcerer didn't chose to spare the girl as an act of kindness but because he realized he had used her in a particular dreadful way lately and she had begun to flinch when he came too near, even when in public, and to tremble in fear. Sooner or later her bizarre behaviour was bound to be noticed and somebody would start asking questions. It was better to wait a little and try to be gentler with her when in bed next time.

§§§

The Tower of the High Gods crushed to the ground with a deafening roar that however didn't disturb the agitated sleep of the capitol citizens who had lived all day through the worst snow storm as far back as people could remember. In the same moment Tamara opened her eyes in a dark room and felt her heart jump in her throat, beating madly, as she recognized the place she was in as the secret room beside her father's trophy room. She was alone. Immediately she looked around for Flagg but soon she remembered he couldn't be there and why.

The sorcerer had been strangely attentive lately, he stayed in her room only for some hours before going back to his dungeon and that night he had already visited her. There wasn't any danger for a repeat performance of the disaster happened the first time she woke up in the secret passage. That however didn't explain why she was there.

Tamara's teeth rattled, in part for the cold but mostly because she must have got up and sleep-walked as it happened while Flagg has been away. Tonight however she didn't want to go back to her bed, nor to stay there curled up only few steps from where he… This time the shivers had nothing to do with the cold. She got up to her feet and, realizing she was wearing only a nightgown that left her throat bared, she tried to cover herself fruitlessly hunching her back and shoulders, hugging herself and feeling ridiculously naked. She exited the secret passage and instead of turning right toward her rooms, she turned left treading the corridor silently as if expecting to meet a serving girl or a soldier on patrol. But at that hour of the night all good serving girls were nestled in their beds, the ones a little less good in the bed of someone else and all guards instead of doing their rounds were most likely passed out drunk somewhere with a roaring fire. She opened the door leading to her father's trophy room, sneaked inside and closed it at her back. The room was still the same as five years before, when her father had been king; it was only a little dirtier because the maids appointed with its cleaning would dust it only sporadically since it wasn't used anymore. Her father's armchair was still in front of the fireplace, his mead stained dressing gown still hung behind the door and Tamara put it on with a reviled sigh and then she rushed to light up the fire, adding the logs and the fuse that had been left piled orderly next to the fireplace even after all those years. She sat on the armchair and stretched out her arms and feet towards the fire that was soon going to warm the room and then she brushed absentmindedly her fingertips over the mead stains.

The dressing gown still smelled like her father, like cheap mead and old man, and to everybody else it would have been a slightly unpleasant smell but to Tamara it was like being welcomed home after a long absence. Wearing her father's dressing gown, sitting on his armchair that in the years had made a light hollow where the old king used to sit, she had the impression of being wrapped in one of her father's sporadic and much desired hugs, feeling safe, really safe, after a too long time. With her eyes reflecting the light, the dressing gown collar raised to her nose to breathe through the cloth, Tamara reflected and remembered.

The queen had always knew that it had been Flagg and not Peter who poisoned her father, even if she had never wanted to admit it to herself. Roland's shade visited her often in her nightmares, accusing her of having left him to die, of having plotted with Flagg to steal the throne from the rightful heir and sometime Peter himself would appear, in chains and with his face filled with disgust, at their father's side. Tamara would try to explain but then her father would start to burn and she would wake up in tears. And those were the more pleasing nightmares, the worst were the ones with the sorcerer as main character. Thinking about Flagg made her came to mind his strange behaviour. Since his return from his hunt of the rebels, he had seemed cold and indifferent, or perhaps she was mistaking his lack of cruelty for lack of interest. When he finally came to her, after almost two weeks of abstinence, she had thought him to be wild and brutal but instead he had been gentle and for the first time in months he caressed her softly and kissed her and he tried to give her pleasure but she had been too scared and too tense. Therefore he, angry and frustrated, had just climbed on her and took her fast and violently, his laboured breath hot against her brow, clutching her wrists so tightly that she had whimpered in pain.

He hadn't looked her in the face, nor kissed her and Tamara had just laid limp under him, thinking only of not tensing up and keep on breathing because at every thrust he crushed her against the bed with his weigh, stealing her breath. Once done he redressed without saying a word and went away, contrary to what has been his habit. The same thing happened the following nights with the only difference being that he stopped trying to give her pleasure. In the course of their relationship, Tamara had felt rarely loved, often hurt and most of the times mistreated but only now she felt used and she believed that under him there could be any woman and that it didn't matter to him that there was her, Tamara.

That night had been different, unfortunately. Flagg had tried to pleasure her again but since his attempt was again unsuccessful, he had become violent. He had hissed that if he couldn't give her pleasure then he would give her pain. He had bitten her throat and at the juncture with the shoulder, leaving bruises and bite marks and then he had turned her on her belly. That made Tamara struggle, crying and begging for him not to hurt her, that she didn't like to do it that way, that she would have done everything if only he was to stop. He hadn't listened. Flagg had pressed her head against the pillow, letting her turn her face enough to breath and Tamara had sobbed in relief when the hand gripping her throat had moved to her right wrist while his other hand seized her left. She had tried to get up but he had crushed her with his bulk blocking her escape. Then he begun moving, altering bites on her neck an on her right shoulder and she had stayed still, letting him do as he pleased, weeping silently and her tears had been licked away by him.

The queen dried her cheeks quickly, ordering herself to stop being foolish. She had the remaining night to herself, she could try to sleep wrapped up in her father's smell and perhaps she wasn't going to have nightmares, perhaps she was even going to dream about that time her father taught her to use the bow and had shouted his prise when she scored a nearly direct hit at her first try. Her gaze fell on Niner's stuffed head, which eyes she had spied her father through. The king's bow and the renowned Foe-Hammer that killed Delain last dragon hung over the beast head and it was rumoured that the arrow still preserved the blood heat of its last kill. Tamara was certain that holding those two relics she would be assured sweet dreams and therefore she dragged a chair to the wall, climbed it and took the bow and the dart from their supports, lingering to peek into Niner's glass eye. All she was able to see was her own reflection. Then she put back the chair, sat on the armchair in front of the fire, curled up and closed her eyes with a tentative smile.

§§§

Peter was running, followed closely by Ben, Naomi and Dennis, the odd group ending with a growling Frisky. The pounding of the metal studded soles of Flagg's boots and his horrible howls chased them in the hallways. Contrary to what one could suppose, Peter wasn't running away but he had in mind a specific goal: his father's bow and Foe-Hammer that Peter knew were kept inside his father's old trophy room, hanging above the beast stuffed head.

He threw open the door without stopping, bursting in the room and diving to the left, reaching up with his hands only to become still in front of the empty supports. Ben and Dennis bolted the entrance but they had just the time to move aside before the sorcerer's magic empowered fist stroke the door, uprooting it from its hinges and making it explode into the room.

Flagg entered with the force of the hurricane, his face was uncovered and his sneer reflected his satisfaction at having cornered his prey, the huge double axe hold steadily in his hands looked eager to spill more blood.

Peter saw him coming toward him and he had just the time to feel relief at the thought the sorcerer seemed, for the time being, willing to ignore his friends. Then the prince raised his closed fist from which Valera golden locket swung and wielded it as a talisman to ward off evil.

- I know you, demon. I know what you are and what you did. You killed my father and it wasn't the first time you plotted from the shadows!

The sorcerer stilled at the sight of the shining trinket.

- You recognize it, I can see it on your face. You killed my father as you have killed Valera's wife. For a too long time you oppressed this kingdom.

Peter stood erect and in that moment, backed by the rightful authority given to him by his heritage and the title that was due to him by birth and natural inclination, he spoke to the sorcerer known as Flagg with the voice of dozens of Delain kings and queens.

- I command you, demon! Leave this kingdom now and forever!

The sorcerer seemed shaken by the proclamation issued by the true king but he soon resumed his self-confidence and his sneer.

- You command nothing, little prince.

He mocked Peter.

- Soon your head, along the heads of your accomplices, will adorn the city walls. The crows will eat your eyes out and the worms will feast with your brain. You did me a favour escaping, you gave me the excuse I needed to have the pleasure to kill you, you little bastard.

From a corner of the room came Naomi's choked exclamation.

- And the nice thing is that I will be praised for it, your own sweet little sister will thank me. I tell you this: I'll make sure she will show me her appreciation for my deed in our bed.

There was no need to explain to Peter the nature of his relationship with the queen but Flagg couldn't resist: he had to pour salt into the wound, he had to shake him with a revelation as shocking as Peter's one about Valera has been. He then observed with deep satisfaction the prince's face becoming pasty.

- What do you mean, you monster!

Flagg's smirk oozed lust.

- The day of her crowning, I deflowered your dear sister. You should have seen how she offered herself to me, like a thank you gift for putting her on the throne. Every night since, I had had her and I took my pleasure from her. She's so sweet, so easily to bruise. She cries and bleeds and moans like a slut underneath me. She's so pliant and obliging, she does everything I tell her to do without breathing a single word, mine in body and soul. I feel so comfortable between her legs that I'm thinking about taking her with me once the kingdom will end up in flames. I do think I deserve a little something for having endured that imbecile of your father and your meddling mother and I will take your sister for as long as she'll last. And the amazing thing is that you can do nothing about it because now you'll die and the whole kingdom will rejoice because, you see, the whole kingdom believes you killed your father and, even if I was the one who did it and it gave me great pleasure and I cheered as the poison burned him alive… well, only you were seen giving him wine.

From behind Peter, from her father's armchair left in the shadow by the fireplace light, came the queen's soft voice.

- You are wrong. Someone saw you: me.

Everybody's eyes turned to the small figure huddled on the armchair. Flagg took a step forward, toward Tamara, every fibre of his being focused on the girl he had controlled for years, owned in body and soul and whom he had abused every night. The girl who had being at the centre of every thought, dream and meagre act of kindness he had conceded to someone in the last millennia.

The bloodthirsty executioner axe lowered. Flagg's heart, which had beaten happily the rhythm of his malign joy, lost a beat in his chest and then it seemed to sink into his gut.

- Tamara? My dove, what are you doing here?

Peter, at the sound of the female voice coming behind him that had filled the sorcerer with dread, turned to the fireplace and the armchair where his sister was curled up and at the beginning he didn't recognize her. The woman illuminated by the roaring fire was minute and blonde-haired and the dancing flames cast dark shadows over her throat and front left bared by her white nightgown neckline. She was huddled up in their father's old dressing gown, the face framed by thin hair was hollow cheeked and her sunken eyes had dark circles under them. Her plump lips, the only thing inherited by their mother, were trembling. In her lap she hold king Roland's long bow and arrow. Only the whispered question uttered by the sorcerer had let Peter identify that apparition as his little sister.

Tamara raised to her knees and fit the arrow to the bow. Foe-Hammer was hot against her cheek and that heat was surely the reason for the tears running from her eyes as she pulled the string.

- You never loved me.

The arrow flied from the bow, the vitrified tip hit the centre of Valera's heart-shaped locket that was snatched from its golden chain with a sweet-sounding jingle, crossed the trophy room and drove itself into Flagg's left eye, the same one that had ached every time he woke up from that nightmare he could never remember. The sorcerer brought both hands to his face, screaming in pain and dropping the axe that shattered as it fell on the stone floor. He affixed his remaining eye on Tamara, watching her with incredulity and then he turned his sight to Peter, his face contorting in a mask of hate, before disappearing, suddenly. The arrow and the locked coated in smoking black blood floated in mid-air for a moment before crushing down, leaving a sizzling heart- shaped imprint on the stone.

Peter moved toward his sister who had gotten up from her perch and was now sobbing as she hugged the bow to herself, keeping her face downwards. The prince tried to hug her, to give her comfort, because years has passed since he saw her last, because his heart was bursting with pity and sorrow but as soon as his hands touched her bony shoulders, Tamara jerked away with a shrill cry, almost falling down on the armchair. Peter couldn't understand her reaction and it was Dennis who explained it to him.

- The queen doesn't want to be touched, never and by anybody.

The prince's eyes started to burn while he tried to hold back the tears, while what he had previously mistook for shadows cast by the fire were exposed instead as horrible bruises showing, clearly written on his sister's skin, the abuse she had suffered at the sorcerer's hands.

- Oh Tamara, what has that monster done to you?

Tamara lifted her face and for the first time she meet her brother's eyes. She had expected hate, rage, surely disgust after Flagg's revelation but instead he was weeping for her, with her, and for the first time in years the queen felt a glimmer of hope and, gathering her courage, she took a tentative step toward the only male figure who had touched her with tenderness and without lust in five years. She placed her forehead on his chest, she had forgotten how tall her brother was! In tears, she at least managed to ask the forgiveness she had never dared to ask for in these years of captivity, in body for him and in soul for her.

Peter's arms circled her protectively and he hold her to his chest lightly only to tighten his grasp progressively and Tamara, in the embrace of someone who really loved her, felt finally free to let go of the burden of all these years of guilt and pain.

§§§

Tamara had gone straight to her rooms to get dressed, saying she could not possibly present herself in tribunal while in her nightgown, and then they had woken up the High Judge, a little timid and fainthearted man who took Peyna's place and who had always bowed to the sorcerer's will. The man cleared Peter from every charge after hearing the queen's testimony and above all after having the castle searched to make sure the sorcerer was really gone for good.

It was some hours before dawn but the little group was still together: Peter, Tamara, Ben, Naomi, Dennis and even Frisky were gathered in Peter's sitting room inside his old quarters. They felt relieved for the danger they had escaped from and unbelieving for how, in the course of a single night, the destiny of the whole kingdom had radically changed.

Peter had insisted on pouring everybody a glass of wine, even to Dennis who had tried uselessly to protest. Only Tamara had declined the wine, preferring some tea. Brother and sister sat side by side on a settee and Peter hold tightly her hand and comforted her as she told her tale. She hid nothing, not the burning jealousy toward Peter that almost turned into hate, nor the cruelties and crimes she took part to and ordered during her reign, even if they had been prompted by Flagg. She had been unable to meet their eyes as she confirmed to her brother the sorcerer's story, about how their relationship begun and how she had been the one to offer herself to him, about how she had never really turned him down nor forbid him access to her bed. Full of shame she confessed he hadn't always hurt her but she had been incapable to reveal the pleasure she discovered with him nor to describe in details the times he brutalized her.

- You were so young, Tamara.

Her brother brushed the lacy high neckline that covered the bruises.

- You would never persuade me that it was you who asked him to do this to you. You couldn't have known. He hurt you, you and the kingdom and the worst thing is that he made you believe it was your fault, that you were the one who wanted it.

Naomi was the one to save her from the guilt that seemed to suffocate her, drowning her in a sea of shame. She bent to meet her downcast eyes and spoke with conviction.

- You did not seduce him. You looked for comfort and kindness in a difficult moment of your life, a moment when you were alone and vulnerable. He took advantage of it. He took advantage of you, of your fragility and of your innocence. You are a victim, not an accomplice. Listen to me: it was not your fault!

Oh, how many times Tamara had wished to hear those words, from anybody! Having a woman pronounce them, someone who had no part in that tragedy, was oddly comforting. She hadn't known her before, she wasn't judging her, she had listened to that sordid tale without prejudices and now she was absolving her. Peter repeated those sweet words followed by Ben and Dennis who was weeping openly.

- Thank you, you have no idea of how much your words mean to me. But it doesn't matter how many times you'll say them, it doesn't matter if you'll shout them from the palace roofs nor if you, Peter, were to write them on an edict. The population, the guards, everybody will always think of me as Tamara the Tax Bringer and once it would become public knowledge I shared a bed with Flagg, and believe me it will, they will add Devil's whore to my name. They'll came to the palace asking for my blood because he's gone but I'm still here, dirtied by his touch.

She got up from the settee leaving her brother's comforting embrace and Naomi's hand.

- I made up my mind, Peter. I have to go away.

The future king jumped to his feet, followed by the exclamations of denials of the others.

- You can't possibly understand… I cannot stay.

Tamara's expression was serene amidst her tears. She had cried that night, just as she had cried in the previous nights but these tears were different. She had cried in desperation and shame while the pain festered inside her like an infected wound. Now the tears were freeing and every drop washed away the infection leaving her light and clean for the first time since she had lost her innocence.

- But… where will you go?

- I'll go hunting. You know my aim is unrivalled. I'll hunt down a beast that inflicted great suffering to the kingdom and to me. A dragon who still lies in the shadows as he licks his wounds, safe in the knowledge he cheated death.

- You can't think of confronting Flagg alone!

Peter was understandably concerned for his sister who seemed to him weak and fragile in that moment. He thought with growing horror of how much Flagg had hurt her, of how much he could still hurt her before killing her if he were to take hold of her again, of all the dangers she would be facing during that endeavour and how she could die even before finding the sorcerer. And then she smiled to him and the young king-to-be realized that he never remembered a time in which his sister had smiled to him. She placed a hand on his chest above his heart and he covered it with his own, not knowing but imagining how much reaching out and touch another human being was painful for her.

- Talking about what happened and having your forgiveness helped a lot, but if I was to stay here I don't know what will become of me. I've been smothered by terror and shame for such a long time. I need to face my fears, I need to face him and make him pay for what he did to you, to father and to me. I wouldn't be able to sleep knowing he is still out there and free and the only way to stop being a victim or an accomplice is to strike him first. I will be an huntress and he will become my prey.

Peter had to let her go accompanied only by Dennis who had categorically refused to be left behind, arguing he too had his sins to atone for. The new king, who would be crowned at midday, watched his sister and his butler leave in the grey light preceding the dawn. Dennis was carrying the supplies and Tamara, hair cut short, dressed in trousers and for the first time not in white, carried their father's bow. Peter stayed there watching them becoming smaller and smaller until they disappear and he couldn't help but feel desperation, asking himself if it was the last time he saw them.

THE END

AN: I always though it strange that Perter recognized his brother, whom he hadn't seen since he was a child while Flagg, who saw him become an ugly and fat boy full of pimples (Mr King's description), mistook him for Roland. Therefore I choose to do the reverse.

AUTHOR RUMBLING:

Yes! It's done!

Are you disappointed by the end? Me too. Mr King wrote that Dennis and Thomas left at dawn, to hunt down Flagg, while Peter weeps. Perhaps they will find him, perhaps not, surely they will live fantastic adventures. Thank you for nothing Mr King. For years I waited a sequel that never arrived.

About Flagg: I know I subverted his character, making him sometimes appear even (gasp!) nice and sometimes exaggeratedly cruel, but I didn't wrote "The guilty" in one go, it took me two years and I jumped here and there in writing the chapters so sometimes I felt happy and Flagg was nice and sometimes I felt naughty and Flagg was a monster. Moreover I know, having read and re-read the story many times, that one could think Flagg in love with Tamara. It is not so. Flagg, as in Mr King's book, is incapable of love and in "The guilty" what he feels for his victim is a mixture of lust, desire to possess, obsession and a diluted and bastardized form of love.

In "The eye of the dragon" Flagg is at Thomas's bedside:

(Beware: I'm translating from the Italian version because I don't own an English version of the book so this is the translation of a translation)

Flagg took in his hand the hand of the sleeping boy and caressed it with something similar to fondness. In his own way he did love Thomas, but Sasha would have recognized Flagg's love for what it was: the love of an owner for his pet.

This sentence with King's repeated claim that Thomas wasn't evil, just sad and unlucky, gave me inspiration for this story. What would have happened if Thomas has been born a girl? Into what could that kind of love evolve had him be a girl desperately in need of love and praising from a male (fatherly) figure? And so this story was born. But, I repeat, Flagg doesn't become good, Flagg is evil to the bones and there is no saving grace within him. Tamara/Thomas is his pet (at a certain point Flagg is called Architect of his birth and Keeper of his life. Still translating from Italian) and every regret he has for losing control is exactly that: because he lost the control. In the movies they say to rape victims that is not about the sex but about the power and this is was my story is about.

I want to say thank Bless you who reviewed me and delora067 who favoured me.

Update 12/04/2019: a huge THANK YOU! to DoctorChimera who told me the name of the arrow (and for leaving a very nice review and for favouring my story)!

Thank you for reading and please leave a review, doesn't matter how much time passed since I published this, I'm always happy to read your comments!