The Empty Ones (Fantasy Romance)

44. The baddest of them all

Whispers. They are the hum that echoes whenever I enter a room. Every damn time.

The bitch queen, mahrani of nobody, the lonely crow... Every time, the names get more and more creative. I think they are having fun with it. They certainly do.

Lonely is a good word because that day when Mauro brought me and Hara in front of the Emperor again was the day I realised I was totally and utterly alone.

My husband decided to start my punishment by striking Hara with lightning off his hands before my very eyes and before the eyes of every important courtier.

I cried and I begged till my voice faded, held back by the power of Emir, of the Five Elites. He whispered he was sorry, yet he rendered me immobile with his power while I had to watch my husband murder the only mother I had ever known.

Her body is still hanging in the plaza of Windheaven, after almost a star circle, devoid of flesh, but enough to make me tear up every time I am forced to see it.

Nobody bothered to get it down from the stake and burn it so she could find peace in the afterlife. But in the meantime, I think that if the gods condition eternal peace by such a petty thing that you have no control over, they don't understand a lot about humanity.

Something snapped in me that day.

Something snapped when, moments after, Salma answered to his summons, just after he passed his judgement and the soldiers carried Hara's lifeless body away, and sat down at his feet, planting a kiss on his knees.

That's the gesture of an official concubine; for me, it was the sign of utter betrayal. I thought my jaw was going to pop with the pressure I was biting my teeth together.

I hated her so much in that moment. The betrayal hurt so deeply, I didn't care that there was a tear running down her cheek, that she was whispering she was sorry.

I loved her like a sister, and she spat in my face. She helped him kill Hara, and then she became his concubine. She saw what he did to me and did it anyway.
All my love for her was replaced by hate, and I was then certain that I was totally and utterly alone in this awful place.

Hate also gave me the courage I didn't have before, the courage to tell Lady Nefri that I don't want to see her ever again in my rooms, and if I do, I will make her regret it. Courage to refuse to go see the court physician, or else I would toss myself out the window, and if my husband took away my power to move away, I would refuse food and find a way to die.

By being this unbearable, I solidified my bad reputation, but also learned that my husband doesn't want me to die. Yet.

He visits me every moon's turn on the dates named by the physician, but no other time. I don't oppose him because I know it doesn't make any sense, but I also stopped crying or feeling anything that day. I taught myself to leave my body and let my mind wander far away to happy times, to the grass and trees in the priory, to Mairi, to Chioma and to Paisa, wherever their spirits might be.

Time passed, and I became more reclusive. Dara, the only handmaid I had left after Salma turned herself into a royal concubine despite being married, behaved in her usual mildly rude way, but my patience was now thinly stretched.

My first day back at court after all the events, she was pouring tea and said nonchalantly that I needed to choose a new cleaning lady since the old one was tired of living.

I threw the hot tea in her face. There are moments I feel sorry for that, but it passes. The court physician healed her, and I got the reputation of a lunatic and became the only royal consort without handmaids because apparently nobody trusts me with having their young daughters around me.