Hey guys! Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you enjoy this chapter and please remember to review! Thanks,

Amélie

Star-Crossed Lovers-Chapter Seventeen

As the guards led Darien to Thion's cell, the young man was overwhelmed by the poor conditions of the prison. Besides the fact that it was unbelievably dirty, the smell drove him to near insanity. However, he did not miss the taunting and the gasps of the other prisoners whose cells he walked by. They seemed to be mesmerized that a Prince would visit their God-forsaken home.

But, they were not nearly surprised as Darien himself when he first laid eyes on the man in Thion's cell, lying on the steel bed, confined there by shackles, as if he could escape the iron bars and the stone walls. He was a very old man, at least in his early seventies, or so it seemed, and very sickly. Emaciated to the point of near starvation, the man looked as though he were going to keel over at any moment. His face was so pale, even though it was practically obscured in darkness, that, had Darien not known better, he would have thought he were looking at a ghost. Ragged coughs issued from the frail body as the young man approached. If this had been a hospital visit, Darien certainly would have felt sorry for the man.

The guards did not open the cell to allow Darien entry, nor did he ask them to do so. He merely stood in front of the bars, content with where he was.

"Prince Endymion, I presume?" The old man asked hoarsely upon seeing who it was to enter his presence. "I've just been talking with your brother! He said you might be coming. I wasn't expecting you this soon, though."

"I go by my middle name, Darien," the Prince said, feeling flustered and angry at a man so vicious who could speak to him so casually.

"As you wish, Your Highness," the elderly man shrugged. "Anyhow, your brother tells me that you're courting our dear Princess Serena."

Darien didn't answer. How dare this man pretend to care about his life?

"And how is our lovely Queen Serenity?" Thion continued to speak as though he hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary from Darien. "It's quite interesting to hear stories of a woman taking on a man's position, isn't it?"'

The Crown Prince of Earth found his voice and spat out angrily, "Well, she did put you in prison." A woman could do that just as good as any man could.

Thion cocked his head to one side and looked at Darien oddly. "Now, that's where you're wrong, young man. You obviously don't know your history very well, or at the very least, you have been misinformed. For it was not the Queen of the Moon to sentence me to life behind bars, but the King."

For a moment or so, Darien was taken aback by the old man's assumptions of him, but then he realized that Thion's words were true. Knowing of Queen Serenity's other accomplishments and never properly hearing of Thion's imprisonment from his teachers (or Nephlite, for that matter, who knew everything about everything), the Prince had always assumed that his incarceration was Serenity's doing. He had never known of Julius's regal contributions.

Thion fumbled for something in his pocket and took out a box of matches and what looked like a cheap cigar.

"Do you mind if I take a few puffs?" he asked Darien. "Don't worry. I won't burn the place down. Believe me, I've tried that already." He smiled, his yellow teeth stained, and went ahead with lighting the cigar without Darien's consent.

"Why are you smoking?" Darien finally asked him. "It looks like you're very sick."

"Correction," the old man took a drag of his cigar. "Dying, in fact, of lung cancer, of all things." The man shrugged. "Who would have thought? The doctors have given me about a month now to live. But…" he paused and let out a cough. "….my guards decided that there would be no harm in letting me enjoy some smokes for the last few weeks of my life. I mean, what more could they do to me? Ha!" He let out a laugh, followed by another cough. "Granted, these cigars aren't anything close to what I used to smoke as a wealthy man, but they do alright. I'm satisfied. They keep me relaxed."

He took another drag of his cigar, blew out some smoke, and continued to speak. "But, no, Queen Serenity had nothing to do with my incarceration. She didn't even attend a second of my trial, probably on His Majesty's insistence. She was in the early stages of quite a delicate condition at the time, of course."

He put the cigar to his mouth once more, but then he paused before taking another breath of the tobacco-filled stick.

"I suppose I do blame myself for my conviction, though," he said slowly. "At least, a bit. I assumed that that little whore would die of her injuries before getting anywhere. How was I supposed to know that she would make it as far as she did? I should have kept her in the basement until she passed."

Darien suddenly felt very ill, almost nauseous. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. How could a man be so cruel? But, he didn't say anything. He merely watched the decrepit old man smoke his cigar.

"But, no," Thion continued, looking off into space. "It was her fault. I warned her." He shook his fist in anger. "I warned all of those girls, that, if they fell pregnant during their line of work, there would be severe consequences."

He smirked. "And I kept my promise, didn't I? I made sure that that little bitch would never be able to conceive again. Although," he took another puff, "I do regret the method of the abortion. It was quite a waste of excellent Neptunian wine, after all."

Darien cringed. He didn't know what wine had to do with an abortion, but he didn't want to find out.

He closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind of what he had just heard, and turned his attention to the reason why he had come to see Thion in the first place.

"I came here because my brother told me that you had a message for Queen Serenity," he said.

The old man smiled. "That I do. " He said, "Like I told you, I'm dying; I only have a short time left to live, so I thought I would give our fair Queen a little tidbit of information before I passed."

"Is it a threat?" asked Darien savagely. Then, he remembered his father's warning not to take anything Thion said to heart. What could a dying man in prison do to threaten a Queen, anyway? But, at the same time, weren't his fears of a threat the entire reason why he came to talk with the old man?

Thion's hollow eyes widened at Darien's question. "Oh, no, dear boy. It's no threat. Certainly not. It won't affect her politics or her reign in the slightest. In fact, it's something she could go her entire life without knowing. I just thought it would be nice of me to give it to her."

"Nice of you?" Darien echoed, incredulously.

"Yes," the man said gravely. "Quite nice." He cleared his throat. "But, like I said, it's not that important. Just the mere fact that…."

He took a long drag of his cigar and let out a trail of smoke, smiling strangely.

"I killed her husband."