The Rebel Queen - Poe Dameron

Chapter XIX: Old Winds Stir

Hazo

Canto Bight...

"If family means anything to you, if you are this compassionate, benevolent leader your people believe you to be, then I await our next meeting...dearest princess." Maligma stopped recording and sent the message via a secure channel, not bothering to scrub the location ping.

A grunt and some profane language came from behind the doors Hazo was guarding.

Maligma stood from her would-be throne, a hideous chair too large for anyone in the room, and said: "Finally. Our guest of honour."

A few muscled thugs pulled Felix in from the doorway. A redhead with boyish features and a cold stare undid the bindings. There was no animosity in his stance, no regret either. He had done his job impassively, and when Hazo transferred the credits, the redhead and his compatriots vanished. They moved quieter than Hazo expected. Carefully. They were probably being cautious, looking out for an ambush. It wasn't going to come. Hazo had talked Maligma out of using locals to vent her anger through. It didn't escape his notice that a few of them had pocketed some of their captive's jewellery.

"Right on time," Maligma said. "Felix. Ever the dashing prince. Even in a cesspool like this."

"Ahh," Felix dusted his coat. "You're the one who tried to leash me. I must say," he rattled his blood-stained necklaces as if they were indeed a leash—A glamorous leash too rich for Hazo's blood. "This isn't how I pictured having a family reunion, dearest aunt."

Felix flashed a charming smile, an air about him screaming entitlement that was simultaneously muffled by his elegance. His attire was eye-catching; fine silk weaves of ornate gold and silver embroidered onto a deep aquamarine the likes of which Hazo had never seen on a fabric. More metallic blue than sea-creature green, not nearly as absorbent as night black, yet somehow bright all at once. Blue had always been his colour, a mirror of his half-blood eyes. Unlike how Hazo despised the green flecks in his iris, Felix's blue eyes became him. Like the melting ice caps turning the mountains where lightning was harvested a slick azure.

Hazo remembered that since childhood, Felix had always been drawn to the enthralling magnificence of lightning farms in the dark and wet seasons. That blinding flash in a black expanse that wasn't quite black; ephemeral and haunting as they quietly waited for fear to strike with the following thunder.

Hazo could tell that was the reason for the shimmering jewels and ornate patterns stitched onto Felix's clothes. Hazo got the impression Felix had tried to capture the essence of a lightning storms beauty. Tried to become it. And he wore that chaos strikingly well. Not unlike how the brightness of the golden-white seas of Thesmora suited Felix's sister, Calista. In contrast though, white always distracted from Felix's complexion, making him look too pale.

Felix scanned the room, unimpressed with his audience as he sauntered towards the chair set aside for Maligma. A purposeful act of defiance. He revelled in watching Maligma reign back her displeasure at his disrespect; then he noticed Hazo and it was like the room melted away and became the distant noise in the memories of youth they shared at the Academy.

Regretfully, Hazo was the first to blink away. The first to show weakness.

Felix leaned forward in his chair, wiping the blood smear on his cut lip with the sleeve of his inner lace shirt. "I see I'm not the only one you managed to wrangle onto a leash." He scoffed. "Never thought I'd see the day when the proud Hazo O'raka, Blood-knife of Luheitham, apprentice to my mother's beloved Mokk-Toh, side against his precious queen in exchange for..." Felix waved his wrist at Maligma, "My aunt, the Kinslayer...Butcher of Karas."

Maligma cracked, composure crumbling into rage. She despised the title of Butcher of Karas, but she never flinched when it was spat in her face. No one had ever had the fortitude or sheer lack of sense to ever call her Kinslayer though.

Maligma struck Felix across his face, her rings taking skin.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you prefer Master of Spies as your honorary?" Felix scoffed, amused, "Careful, dearest aunt. Best stow that temper before someone uses it against you."

"There's a reason you were born a prince, snake-tongue," Maligma said.

Felix licked the blood that meandered onto his lip from his cheek. He looked back at Hazo now, the rush of confrontation making him visibly more excited, "We all know it's because I would have made a hell of a queen."

Felix smirked as Maligma grabbed him by the jaw with two bony fingers to whisper a threat, "Beautiful Felix. Always with the guile and the confidence of a king that will never be. Tell me, will all your adoring masses still fall for your empty words if you don't have a face?"

"Tell me," Felix began, "what was it like knowing you'd always be behind two queen's shadows? Seen as nothing but a gravedigger while they were painted up like saviours? Did you even get a coronation flower? Did you take the time to pick one? Something green perhaps, for all the bloodshed. Or red, red is your colour. Rage. You look captivating in rage. Maybe you wanted to go with something more on-the-nose, a flower with teeth?"

Maligma shoved his face back and inhaled to cool off; or so Hazo thought, then he noticed what he could only describe as pain on Maligma's face.

Felix laid back into the chair, "You and I both know, a ruler without a flower is no ruler at all. They're a tyrant. And if you didn't think, even once, what your flower would be as queen, then..." He smiled, something unsettling dawning over him as Maligma's eyes turned glassy. "Ah...it wasn't planned."

Maligma spun on her heel, teeth snapping like a rabid animal's canines when she shouted at Felix, "A flower is a flower is a flower! What significance does it hold when I now have the throne? I have the power now! Me!"

"Because of what it represents," Felix's voice grew an octave lower, more serious. "The coronation flower symbolises more than a change in administration. It is a symbol to be loved by, revered by...feared by. It is what the people grow in their homes and on farmlands to celebrate the anniversary of a ruler's death. It is what they weave into laurel crowns in celebration of a new year of prosperity. It is what they hang on their doorsteps to ward off bad luck.

"It is as close to godhood as we get. We've all thought about it. Even in passing. The symbol we shall be remembered by. I know I have. And the fact that you didn't sings a thousand unsung words."

Maligma took a step forward and held herself like the soldier she was. With a slight flutter of Felix's eyelids, Hazo recognised fear in him. Felix had overstepped.

"You overestimate your reach here," Maligma said. "You are a prisoner. I need you to get Calista. Then, after I kill her, I will savour the pleasure of killing you next. Slowly. In the most painful way. Obscurity. You thrive on fame and praise. I will take it away. Leaving you with nothing but these very beautiful silks you dress yourself in to keep warm in the winters on Illis."

Felix's breathing hitched, "No. You won't." He sounded more sure than he looked. Felix had a hook, and at the very real consequence of being eaten by the creature he tried to fish, he cast the line.

"Oh?" Maligma cocked her head to the side. She bit the bait.

Hazo gritted his teeth and stared daggers at Felix's effeminate face. He knew this dance. He had been lead around by Felix for years with that sneaky charm of his. Hazo never imagined Felix's games would work on Maligma too.

Somehow, Canto Bight seemed a little less seedy, and a little more enticing to Hazo.

He hated that.