We are all entitled to be beautiful

Chapter Eighteen - A Serpent's Deal

Xavier

Despicable, that was the only word fit to define who was once my mother. She had given me an ultimatum I could not refuse. For Rose, I would do anything. Even take the crown I had so desperately wanted to escape.

"Wait," I called out after her with a thick tongue as I buried myself into my own undoing. This was all she wanted, her son on the throne. Something that would mean she had won.

But a world without Rose was not one I could bare.

"You give me half the antidote, to keep her alive, the rest when I return to the throne? Yes."

There was no resistance, she gave me the smile fitting of a serpent all sharp teeth, and gleaming satisfaction, "Very well."

Her skirts were muddied with the dirt surrounding the hospital the shards of glass embedded deeply in them, but they caught the light, the sun setting into darkness, drifting through shattered glass. I thought of Eleanor, of Kai of everything they had sacrificed. How foolish of me to think that sitting on the throne would be more sacrifice than everything they had done. 

The world may believe in a future run by Rose but by me?

But I was selfish at heart, I would not lose her, even if I had to sacrifice the world for her to breathe again. She always did have a better heart than mine.

The Fallen Queen's smile was a writhing thing, that spread across her face, she slid her hand delicately between the billowing dress that was torn out of shape, revealing the smallest of vials. The liquid shimmered tauntingly right there in my reach, I stepped forward arms reaching out for it.

She clicked her tongue, "Ah, ah, ah," a lacquered malice in eyes too dead to see, "Don't think it will be that easy my son. I will administer the antidote, I will keep it in my hands, you will not be able to replicate it without me. So kill me and she dies with me."

"That," I gritted out, "Was not what we agreed."

A shallow laugh escaped her lips, breathy and deranged, "You are so much like her."

"Rose..."

"No, no one could ever be your dear Rosalind, someone else, someone who would have loved to remain in your mind. Someone you have forgotten and will never know who."

My head pounded memories of being injected with the chemicals to alter my physique crashing through me. The first tests of the new beauty enhancers were used on me first, but I knew the Queen had tampered with the chemicals, forged poisons far more capable than altering mere physical appearances. They could control the mind, alter brain chemistry, and as she stared at me with hollow eyes, I felt the chasm in my heart collapse in on itself.

There was someone I didn't remember, someone who had been culled from the recesses of my mind.

I lurched forward, nausea coiling its way up my throat and festering there.

"Who are you talking about," it was a quiet thing my voice, so much smaller than I wanted it to be. Fragile breakable everything she wasn't. A reptile that had survived it all, slithering her way back to power. There was nothing I could do, each time I felt I understood who I was there was a masterful plan to unravel me beyond recognition.

I felt the anger flare, a daunting feeling that festered and festered until it was the only thing I could feel.

I felt the curling of my fists, not a weapon in sight, but I stared at her, "Do not think you can twist my mind as you used to."

"Don't be a fool, Xavier, I will always," her eyes glittered, "Be able to control you. As long as I have this," she shook the vial as though it did not contain the cure needed to save the only woman I had ever loved. The only person I could ever love as intensely as I did. Rose Sparks was my life, and I would not care if she were my death.

"I control her, and I control you. And even if she withers away, I will control you with everything I have taken from you Xavier. You are too naive for this game. Take the crown and get her back. Or stay in misery I will still achieve my power because when you have nothing, I will be all you have left."

"Never," I promised, "Never will you achieve any of that."

"So I should take the cure-"

"No. You want immunity I will give you immunity. But if she never wakes up, I'll make sure the same happens to you."

A lilt of horror brushed across her face for one simple moment. 

She was afraid.

Because the threat was not hollow, it was as condemning as hers.

I stalked forward, face to face with the wicked being before me. 

Tresses of dark hair, skin too pale to be real, and glass for eyes, "You will never breathe again if she dies. So give her the antidote, before I run you through and take it myself."

A glimmer of something unnameable flickered in her eyes, "Very well, my dear boy," her hand reach for my face, but I moved back. Her hand froze in the air, as though waiting for the embrace of a ghost.

And perhaps that is what I had become, a soul wandering the planes of the earth, a ghost that wished for freedom, or perhaps ruination.

"Give her the antidote, and I'll see to it that you live to see another day," I turned, a cruel twist of my lips as all semblance of feeling pooled out of my body, "Do not forget, this is what you created."

She might have smiled at that, but I did not look back.