Lover's Curse (Red Queen Awards Winner)

Chapter Seventeen - Queen of War

My name is whatever you decide                                                                                                                                   And I'm just gonna call you mine                                                                                                                    - Don't Blame Me by Taylor Swift

Mare

He's insane.  I'm insane.  I'm crumbling to bits and he's putting me back together, piece by painful piece.  A healer of destruction.  A monster of kindness.

He's remaking me in his own image.

I stagger through the corridor, electricity scorching my bones.  I still see him.  He's still sprawled across my bed, eyes to the ceiling as I brand him as he did me.  Muttering deserve this, deserve this over and over again until I stop.

Maven has no sense of restraint.  No sense of reason.  He would have stayed there as long as I let him.  Would have thanked me afterwards.

Kissed me.

My knees give out, and I slide down the wall, huddling on the floor.  You can be.  I won't stop loving you.

I understand.

Set him on fire.  Set me on fire.  Watch us turn to ash in the wind, blinding the guilty and the innocent, burning all we touch until there is naught but pain and embers.

Nothing but us.

I hyperventilate, vision blurring to tears.  He thinks this is romance.  That I enjoy this in the same way he does.

A part of me does.  A part of me wants to watch him writhe in agony, too ashamed to make me stop.  A part of me wants him to know how it felt at Harbor Bay, trapped by a merciless lover, isolated from all who could help him.

I shouldn't indulge that part of me.  That part of me would rip the world asunder with her spite.  That part of me revels in excess.

The rest of me is sane.  The rest of me understands his game.  The rest of me has control of my emotions.

I won't let it be otherwise.

_

"I've composed several drafts for you to review."  I slide the papers from his desk to his hands.  "I'll need a few more days to perfect her handwriting, but I can mimic her cadence well enough.  I hope you enjoy them.  Those insults weren't easy."

"Lovely."  Maven folds his arms.  "Please get out of my chair."

"No."

He twitches.

"I was here first.  If you wanted it so badly, you should've been sitting in it."

"You're right."  Maven hovers in front of me.  "Move over."

I blink.  "What?"

"I'll share the seat with you.  Move over."  He's smirking.  "Do you not want it anymore?"

This is stupid.  "Fine."  I scoot over, wedging myself against the left arm.  "You wanna sit?  Sit."

He hesitates for a few seconds before nestling beside me, tense and uncomfortably warm.  "We don't fit."

"'Then get up."

"You get up."

"Never."

"Excuse me."  An attendant pokes a head through the door, brow furrowing.  "Your Majesty?"

Maven stills.  We must look like fools, trying to fit two bodies in a chair built for one.  I point a finger.  "His idea."