STLTH 100

14.

It was Sunday when Marco, angered, had put his fist through the table. The round table that had been the center of her room where she had her meals, her squirely polishing duties, and her biweekly drinking sessions languished in ruins even now on Thursday night; not so much as a wooden splinter had moved in four days. The mess being nothing more than a byproduct of her apathy, Higgs ignored the chunks of destroyed wood she stepped past them, pulling off her boots at the last to fall into bed.

She'd just attempted a sleeping tour of the royal bedrooms and the guest bedroom, but had spent hours scrutinizing the shadows about them and failed to get even a wink of sleep. The princess's bed was too soft and decadent, the royal couple's too hard and immense, and the guest room had a wallpaper that had a tasteless peacock aesthetic in the wallpaper and curtains, exaggerated feather eyes watching her. Maybe it was designed intentionally to make the guests believe they were surveilled at all times – it worked, although she knew better.

Higgs returned home to her bedroom, where every shadow had a physical name: chair, dresser, barrel, and so on. Despite the increasing dust and neglect, it remained the only place where she could sleep, though always surrounded by reminders of how badly she had screwed up.

Much of her time, including today, was spent scavenging the castle for anything useful left behind in the wake of the Butterfly family's abdication of the throne. Not much was around, and her resourcefulness could only get her so far. Higgs sold and traded what she could to feed herself, but today's haul had so little return on food that on her way home, she'd at last made up her mind that she'd go to Eclipsa in the morning.

She wasn't thrilled to be working with monsters and being shoulder-to-shoulder with the beast that had sucked the soul out of her, but avoiding starving to death took a narrow first. She was that desperate. Besides, Marco had promised that Eclipsa and subsequently Meteora would be harmless.

Her stomach was empty again. Her mind ran on the barrel of wine in the corner, Just a cup to keep away the ulcers and help her fall asleep. Then she'd abandon it here in the morning. She wanted it so badly that the recall of its taste curled her tongue around in her mouth, craving the red nectar that was only a dozen steps away.

Higgs adjusted her pillow and turned over in her bed to face the wall, wanting morning to come as soon as possible.

She didn't know how long she had lied there, but she smelt something new after a time, a waft of cooked food, and her eyes opened wide. Almost lurching out of her single bed, she stared out into the darkness of her room and saw someone sitting around her table, both of which were two sets of silhouettes and shadows that didn't make sense, and the more she stared, the more frightened she became.

"Who's there?!"

"It's me," Marco said.

The voice was familiar and the silhouette immediately less terrifying. "Marco, is that you?" she asked incredulously. She didn't expect to see him again so soon and never in such circumstances. She didn't even think to rebuke him for entering her room in the dead of night. By the smell of things, there was food on the table. Hers, maybe? "Why?"

"Why what?" he asked. She'd asked the question but didn't know how to specify. Why enter her room? Why at night? Why bring food? Why replace her broken table? None of these things made sense.

"The place looked a mess," Marco commented, "so I thought I'd clean up a bit. Got the table from a room down the hall." He rambled. "Oh! I brought some food too. Peace offering, I guess."

"You didn't have to. I was the one who was wrong. If we'd talked things over from the start, we could've avoided this whole mess."

"That's what I thought, too."

She smiled. Marco was easily forgiving. At least they still had their friendship. She got out of bed, her bare feet plodding towards the empty chair that had been placed around the table opposite Marco – not even a prick of a stray splinter had offended her. Marco had been meticulous, even in the dark. She didn't know how he could pull off such a feat in the darkness; the only light in the room was the half-waning moonlight from the window, and it didn't shine at the precise angle to indulge light as best as it could. She could at least see her surroundings well enough as well as their silhouettes.

At the table, there was a heaping plate of food before her. No spoons, no forks… finger food? She reached and grasped something; it felt like a corn chip which she confirmed upon eating. It was really good, better than the usual fare but it was just before her second that she realized that the complimenting taste was the slathering of cheese.

Her pulse quickened, pounding in her ears and pumping cold blood around her veins.

"What's the matter? Afraid of poison?" Marco teased lightly. She'd said the same thing to him then, and it would be disastrously ironic if it was. If it were Marco paying her back with a curse, she'd prefer that a thousand times before the perfectly normal meal before her now. She didn't eat anymore, and he filled the silence. "What's wrong? I thought you liked nachos," he asked.

I never told Marco that I liked nachos.

She was still now, and she realized that the boy before her had also come to the realization that she now knew who he was.

"How are you doing?"

She stuttered. "I'm f-fine. I was sleeping just now. I'll just go back to bed."

"I was hoping we could talk. I'm worried about you. I saw you today at the market. You looked thin."

She knew him well. He was caring, loving, and tidy. She just had to play her role, and she'd be fine. It'd keep him from becoming vicious. If she had played her role, he wouldn't have scarred her in the first place.

"It's been rough," she admitted nervously, making conversation to keep him mollified. "The queen's disappeared, so I'm out of a job."

"Queen Moon?" he asked to clarify. "She's in your hometown."

What's she doing there? What was HE doing there?

In a moment, he answered all her unvoiced questions. "I was looking for you for a long time. When I was passing through Pie Island, the only familiar faces I saw were the queen and the entertainers. You know, the royal fool and the songstrel. Turns out they're married now. I'm happy for them."

He rambled like Marco. He cared like Marco. He cooked and tidied like Marco. Undoubtedly, he was just like Marco, sans the only difference: only one of them would carry a blackening knife to her and carve out a name to identify her with, scarring her for life and wedding her to him without a ring. She wondered if he was there to hurt her, having finally hunted her down.

"Everyone's been looking for Moon," Higgs mumbled, trying to fix the subject on the queen. "And she's been at Pie Island this whole time? What was she doing there?"

The boy laughed. "What else you expect? Baking pies!" She didn't share his humor. She was terrified. He reached across the table and she flinched noticeably, almost expecting him to grab her arm with one hand while holding a knife in his other, only for the boy to help himself to some of the nachos. "You're as jumpy as a rabbit in an open field, relax."

He got up and walked around the table towards her, and she shrunk into the chair. He knelt before her, his face slightly more visible in the low light. It was Marco's face, a thin line scar under his left eye, lying opposite his mole in juxtaposition. He took her trembling hands in his and kissed them before squeezing them lovingly. "It's alright, Sianne. Do you want me to bring the queen back? I can do that. Or should I do something about Eclipsa? If she's around, Moon will never be queen again, right? What do you want me to do? I'll do anything."

She wanted him to stop calling her Sianne. She wanted him to leave her alone and never come back. She wanted him now to stop sliding off her arm-warmer that revealed the scarring that she had tried so desperately to hide.

MY SIANNE, MY TREASURE.

He was insane, unwelcome, and dangerous.

In the end, she just remained still, silent. Maybe he became disinterested with a statue but he eventually bid her goodbye and said he'd check up on her in the future; he cut open a portal and left. Long into the night, past daybreak, Annise didn't budge an inch from her chair, and when she did, it was to pull on her boots and run to Eclipsa's castle as quickly as she could, stopping for nothing: not food, not water, no one. She didn't even look back because after so long, Rocam was now only a step behind her.