Warning: This chapter will be very gory. There will be lots of blood. There will be death. If anyone reading this has a squeamish stomach, then don't read it. You have been warned.

Chapter Sixteen: Reaping What's Sewn

The king's hair stood on end as he fell off his chair in complete and total shock. Everyone in the room gasped and started looking around, trying to find out where the voice was coming from.

"H-Haru?" the king asked timidly, using his throne to help him get back on his hind paws, with Natori on the other side of him. His mismatched eyes were rolling around in their sockets. "D-did you just talk?"

"Of course not, you idiot. I can't talk, remember? I haven't spoken a single word since you forced me to marry you." She looked over at a very stunned Lune and Yuki and sent them a private message. "I want you two to get the kittens out of here. Some things are going to happen that you don't want them to see, trust me. Please hurry!"

Lune broke out of the trance first and struggled to his feet. He whispered softly to his children and wife while quietly leaving the table. Haru refocused her attention on the king, to make sure that he wouldn't notice his retreating family. But she made sure that everyone in the castle besides the kittens could hear her loud and clear.

"You want the real truth, Phoebus? I never stopped talking to you. The only difference between then and now is that I have a way to make you hear me. You were deaf either way, so I really have to talk loud to get you to notice that I despise you with a holy passion. HOW DUMB DO YOU HAVE TO BE, NOT TO NOTICE SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!"

Everyone started laughing uproariously as the king flushed red with humiliation and anger.

"You can't talk to me like that!" he howled at her, but she very calmly sipped her water.

"I've been talking to you like that since before we got married, you idiot. Maybe if you had been smart enough to listen to me back then, I wouldn't talk to you like that now!"

Familiar with the king's reflexes, the queen rolled expertly out of her chair as his fist demolished it into firewood.

"I thought I beat this out of you! Everything I have is at your feet, whatever you want, you get. What's so bad about that?!"

"You want to know?! You really want to know what's wrong with being your queen?! Answer this one question, and you can't help, Natori. The king has to answer this on his own."

Natori flinched away from the royal table.

"Phoebus, what is my favorite color?"

The Cat King blinked.

"Um… yellow?"

"No. Try again."

"Purple?"

"It's green, you moron. What about my mother's name? My father's?"

"What does that have to do with anything?!" the king howled helplessly.

"These are things you should have known at least within the first month of our marriage! I know your favorite color is lavender, your parents' names were Artemis and Diana. I can name everyone in your family tree for at least five generations, but you can't name anyone in mine. You don't even know what my real name is."

"What's that supposed to mean?!" the lazy monarch demanded. The queen looked at the Cat Creation across the room.

"Baron, what were my parents' names?"

"Damian and Nicole von Blut," he answered automatically, a little surprised that she was choosing to announce it to the world, after hiding it for so long.

Everyone gasped again as the king's jaw dropped.

"No…! There is no possible way that you're their daughter!"

Haru smiled grimly and pulled down one sleeve so he could see her tan shoulder, which was slowly turning as white as starlight as it trailed up and around her neck.

"Then I suppose that this is just a sickness that will pass?" she asked while taking off her gloves, looking at the white fur with delight. "How do you think I'm talking to you without my voice, if I'm not a von Blut? You really should have checked my background before deciding that I would join the royal family."

The king was shaking his head madly, watching his wife's face turn pale, and her long head fur slowly turn white from roots to end, like a changing waterfall.

"But… why didn't…"

"Father bound my powers before he died, but left me enough to trade one thing of mine to change something in someone else. You foolish jerk. I traded my voice to make sure that you could never father children on anyone again."

The king howled with rage, brandishing his dinner knife like a weapon. He lunged for her, and took a nice slice out of her arm as she jumped away.

"I wanted children!" he shrieked at her while coming to attack her again. Swishing her hand slightly, an ornate dagger materialized in the white-haired feline's hand in time for her to deflect the knife.

"And I wanted a normal human life to share with someone I loved! Why should you get what you want when I can't have it either because of your selfishness?! Frankly, I find Natoru more attractive than you!" she shrieked back, sliding the knife so that her husband's arms became deeply cut by the elaborate weapon. The courtiers' laughter rang out once more as the king howled his displeasure and humiliation.

And the battle began. The royal couple circled each other, clashing their weapons often, and leaving long red gashes that stained their fur.

If the Cat King had kept his temper under control, it would have been an easy win for him. He was twice as big as his wife, and much stronger. On top of that, he had been a renowned fighter in his youth.

But he didn't. All thought was erased from his mind as he brainlessly tried to bury his dinner knife into the slim queen, who although wasn't as strong as her husband, was much faster, and her weapon sharper. She dodged his blows with ease, taking deep slashes into his wrinkled flesh while he was still extending his arm for a futile thrust. The marble tiles on the floor soon became slick with the monarch's dark blood.

It was the only reason that Haru slipped, and fell flat on her back.

Frothing red foam at the mouth, the king uttered a final battle cry as he shoved his weapon directly into his wife's heart.

Baron might have uttered a scream. He wasn't quite sure, the room seemed to swim in his vision as he jumped over the barricade of servant and nobles, who were climbing over each other in order to get a better view of the cat fight (all pun intended).

"Don't, Baron!" the Cat Queen cried out in her mind as the Creation rushed to her. "You promised you wouldn't interfere, no matter what! Trust Dad! Trust me!" she begged, rising to her feet again, despite the weapon protruding from her chest.

Baron stopped ten feet away as the queen raised her dagger, and shoved it through her husband's neck. He cried out, but it was gurgled thanks to the rising blood. He fell to the ground, slowly becoming immersed in a pool of his own blood. Those large mismatched eyes glazed over, and he was dead.

His wife stumbled away a bit, and pulled out the knife that the king had planted in her chest. Blood was running down her front like a river as she panted painfully, holding the silver watch to her heart with both hands. The purple gem on her forehead loosened its grip, and then fell to the floor, clinking against the polished tiles.

Something red poured out of the king, but it wasn't more blood. Like a mist, red particles rose from the king's bleeding body to form a cloud, and then make a beeline for the queen, the particles at the front sort of making an arrowhead directed at her throat. Haru lifted her chin high, so that the strange substance could become absorbed through the skin. When the last of it was inside the pale young queen, she stood up tall and proud, despite the fatal wound she had been given for her efforts. Very weakly, she smiled at everyone as her eyes began to roll back.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should never force anyone to marry you."

With that, she fell to the ground, Baron just catching her. Her glorious brown eyes closed, and she stopped breathing, still holding the precious watch to her heart.

She had finally found peace.

"No!" Baron wrapped one arm around Haru's shoulders, and started patting her face a bit. "Haru, talk to me! You can't go like this!"

"Let it be," Natori said grimly. "She's dead."

"No, she can't be dead!" 'Damian! You promised she would be fine!'