Broken But Unburnt

Chapter 30 - Gisella

Chapter 30: Gisella

Palace of the Centauri Throne: Kingdom of Karil

"Nicolas, please–"

"Propaganda!"

Ronin had been trying to calm the raging king for the past hour to no avail. Gisella had forgone any attempts to assuage the regent's temper the moment she entered, having been fetched by some terrified servant, to find the royal chambers in utter disarray. Glass littered the floor in a reflective spectacle of dazzling debris. Curtains hung half off their rods, torn and shredded, sliding onto the lush carpet below in a heap. The door was covered in dripping red wine as though the king had thrown the goblet at his Captain of the Guards upon his entrance. Gisella wasn't entirely uncertain that wasn't precisely what had happened. In any case, she was grateful the king had run out of wine to toss at people before she arrived.

"He dares to recruit my lords?" Nicolas repeated for the fifth time. Gisella leaned coolly against an armoire near the door, inspecting her fingernails so as not to justify the king's tantrum with a visible amount of interest. "My own noblemen! The gentry whom were half appointed by my father, who followed him until his death, who met with me, treated with me, hosted me in their homes my whole lives! And he dares to call them to his wretched cause."

"Would it not be prudent," Ronin started carefully, "to perhaps begin to consider publicly acknowledging the existence of magic as a remote possibility?"

For the first time in an hour, Nicolas had not interrupted the Captain. Gisella looked up in interest and found the king still for the first time since she had entered. Seething, wild eyed and tousled hair, but still.

"I did that," Nicolas snapped.

"To the nobility, yes," Ronin continued. "But to the public at large–"

"The public which my father told years ago magic had been eliminated, stripped from the country entirely by him and his generals."

"I admit that it may not have the best optics."

"Optics! He hung some of them for heresy for saying magic even existed! And you want me to go to them now, after all that my family has done, and just say what? 'Whoops, our bad. Turns out it's harder to get rid of than we thought. Oh, and by the way, a force of it, the likes of which this world has never seen, might be out to get us since we went and made ourselves the single greatest threat to its existence. Right, and my uncle is recruiting them!'"

With that, Nicolas whirled around and gave his nightstand a kick. The wood splintered with an ear-splitting crack and Ronin closed his eyes and sighed. Gisella couldn't help but roll her eyes and shake her head. Unfortunately, the king noticed.

"You have something to say, spy?" he spat, speaking her title as if it were a slur.

"You speak of the public as if they have no mind of their own," she said, pushing off of the armoire and standing before him, arms crossed. "As if they sit in their homes just waiting for kings and lords to tell them what to think. Do you really believe that it exists out there and not in here?"

Nicolas stared at her, dumbfounded and furious. Gisella knew she was treading on dangerous ground but someone had to pull this former princling's head out of his ass.

"It's here, Nicolas. It always has been. Your father could no more eradicate it than the Idorians can control it. The people live among it. The people know it's there and every moment you spend telling them otherwise is a little bit farther you drive them away from you. Instead of denying it, instead of ignoring it, you could choose to use it."

Ronin's gaze snapped to her. Careful, Gisella, it seemed to say. She knew. She was being cautious. But desperate times called for desperate measures and she was feeling more and more desperate as of late.