A Revenge So Bittersweet

VI: Break

"God over the Beasts, Faunus - father to the House Fera (extant), and supposedly every other magical creature to roam the continent. House Fera retains slit pupils like a dragon, pointed ears peeking out of their hair atop their heads like a feline, a tail like a fox, and the same pointed teeth pointed teeth the same of any carnivore. Once, they could shift forms at will, and legend tells of Fera men who changed into doves and chimeras, only to be unable to return to their original state. This author wonders as to whether their original form was a stylistic choice they got stuck with following their loss of magical ability."

- excerpt from A Guide to the Divine Houses of Westlanthby Lord Cepheus Austeria

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"A pleasure to make your acquaintance," Aurelius said. "I'd been informed ahead of time that you might prove to be a... particular difficulty. It seems that assumption was accurate."

When Sirius lifted his gaze from the ground, a slow, venomous drag up Aurelius's long legs, over a black uniform-jacket clad torso torn ragged, and he finally deigned to give Aurelius a moment of his consideration, my brother was every bit the High Lord people doubted he would live to be.

Too young, they once whispered, hoping for and simultaneously fearing his downfall, the destruction of yet another Divine House. Untried.

But I feared the price for proving them wrong would cost us. I feared, for the first time, that being made of iron would be his undoing.

"Rune," Aurelius called, and the older man drifted to his side. Rune's expression softened with pity as he looked down at my brother. "Tell me: where is House Austeria's next heir?"

So eager to seek out my brother's replacement.

The white-eyed High Lord of House Tempus's gaze swept brusquely over the present aristocrats, moving on in the absence of violet Austeria eyes, their spun-gold hair and the Markings. He surveyed the rest of the room, and I shivered when he paused over the servants, over me, sequestered amidst them. Although I physically blended in well with the pure-blooded humans around me, the High Lord and I had spoken at length following the wedding ceremony. I saw recognition flash across his ghostly face when he passed me over, despite my washed off Markings.

Or perhaps I imagined it, searching out cues that didn't exist in my fear, because he told his king, "His next of kin is not here, Your Majesty," and he could not lie to a direct question from the person for whom he moments ago swore himself into subservience.

"We let them escape?" A hard note crept into Aurelius's voice, the first sign of any genuine emotion I'd heard from him that night. "This crowning ceremony also ascended Andromeda Austeria to High Queen, did it not? Surely more of her kin than just this one boy came to honor that privilege, as a formality, if nothing else."

"Keep my sister's name out of your mouth," said Sirius frigidly, his hands clenching and unclenching in his binds behind his back.

"I took no joy from her death. I would have spared her if I could, but for her to live, her Bonded husband would have also had to live, and that exceeded my mercy. I gave them the chance to mutually break their vow, just as I am giving it to you. They refused. Should you also reject my offer, you will face the same consequences."

"I will, will I?" my brother sneered, ever the open book, heart bleeding out all over his sleeve. Loathing showed in every curl of his lip and wrinkle of his brow. His eyes nearly glowed in their intensity, constellations swirling against a violet canvas. "If you kill me here, unlike with House Cassidus, there is no spare of my blood for you to extort an oath from in my stead. House Austeria will never be under your control. My brother and sister will wage war the likes of which this country has never seen. If we bleed, we will bleed all across the countryside, and you will bleed with us. All of you, everyone who's sworn their allegiance are complicit! Friends who have become foes and lions who have become lambs, all of you will feed the rivers with your blood until the last Austeria head is parted from its shoulders!"

That was a curse if I'd ever heard one. Less a threat than a promise, and based on the feverish light in Sirius's eyes, he believed it wholeheartedly.

But it would be so much worse than just that. Our neighboring countries would seize upon our internal discord to destroy us, stealing our land and our gold and our people for themselves. House Austeria would not fade quietly across the vale. No. Even if the other ten Houses rallied against us, which they would be inclined to do, due to the oaths they just swore to the crown, my House held the largest individual military force of any of the families due to our location at the border. We were the impenetrable wall preventing the nation of Naerlanth from uniting the northwestern part of the continent.

Nobody wanted that to happen, except, it seemed, Sirius.

For Andromeda.

As honor demanded.

The tension choked everyone in the room, from the maids, to the knights, to the aristocrats. No one - except perhaps Rune and the insurgents - particularly held any loyalty to our new king, but they didn't need to in order to dread the future my brother laid out for them. The singular path forward.

Appearing contemplative, Aurelius spun his dagger experimentally in his hand, catching it by the slickened tip. He spun it again. It made one rotation before he snatched it out of the air with his other hand, and used the dripping blade to tilt my brother's chin up to force a meeting of their eyes.

Aurelius made no offer to cut Sirius's binds as he had done for the old Lord Cassidus.

"I don't need to kill you," Aurelius said softly, a whisper that carried. "It would have been easier for me if you swore fealty, yes, but I can also keep you chained in the dungeons until you change your mind. Given the correct... pressure point... I can be quite persuasive. You'll bend the knee eventually, or you'll grow old down there. Meanwhile, you'll still be alive, so House Austeria will be unable to rally behind a new High Lord. They will fracture, leaderless. You're a young man. I'd say that gives me a few decades to work through the issue."

He smiled, then, shrewdly, in a way that screamed, 'Thanks for playing, but you already lost'.

Sirius hadn't lost, though. Aurelius underestimated the depth of the well that held my brother's grief-driven malice, and the pride that kept digging the well deeper still. I saw the shift in my brother's eyes, the darkness taking hold.

Damning my disguise, I opened my dry mouth to protest.

"Silence."

My brother's words dropped around me like hefty shackles, the weight of the command bowing my shoulders and filling my throat with cotton. The sensation was a foreign one. Neither he nor our father had ever given me such an unshakable order, driven into me with the full force of my High Lord's ironclad will. On occasion, when I showed particular obstinance, I'd skirted around the sensation, but the real thing was as different as warming my hands around a fire and plunging a limb into the licking flames.

I couldn't speak. Couldn't cry out or express the most minor whimper of horror.

"You cannot command me, High Lord or not," Aurelius said, misinterpreting Sirius's command to be for him. "You have no power here."

For the first time since their conversation had started, my brother found me in the line of servants. He held my wide-eyed, imploring gaze, mutely begging him, Don't. Don't do this.

"I," he began with a sense of unerring finality, "have all the power I need."

And when he impaled his neck on Aurelius's blade, my scream caught around his last command, and threatened to choke me into unconsciousness.