The Empty Ones (Fantasy Romance)

84. Breaking point

TW:This is a rather violent and overal trigering chapter. It's not super explicit but still, be aware.

My husband's eyes burn like embers in the dimm candlelight of my rooms.

They will likely be the last thing I will ever see. To go looking at the most hateful thing in the world. I pity my damn self.

"Why did you do that?" he asks. His voice isn't loud, but steady, pressing on the sounds. He is beyond angry. He is fuming and the fire power is what's giving his eyes the shimmer, barely containing it.

"It was the truth," I say, as calmly as possible, but hide my shaking hands behind my back. "Laini just wanted to get with child."

He is now only one step away.

"You know what I mean!" he hisses and grabs my hair in the familiar way he does when he is angry, really angry.

"Laini didn't deserve to die. She did nothing wrong. I know your Highness knows it. I am certain the court physician analysed the substance. Admittedly, your Highness played her mistake out well, as I would have expected from the feared flaming Emperor. But now you cannot execute her anymore without risking dirty war from Tajir. They would lose but they would make us bleed. And the one executed would be an innocent girl and that might steer squirmishes inside our borders too. Milé's parents would fear for her life... The unruly Ile of Milth where you violently put off a rebellion led by a scrawny, empty girl would also not help with popularity... And the famine that war will bring... And powerty because of the lack of commerce. The expensive merchandise from the Ashen Continent only the nanite powered ships can bring will be missing and upset the spoiled noble houses. While Tajir still has the faster and more robust ships. And if I were then, I would start to raid our shores just to irk us, because they could. So, your Highness, you see, Laini dying is a really bad idea."

I hold his gaze all this time while I am talking and it feels like gazing into the abyss and the monsters staring back at me ready to tear me to pieces.

"You know, right now you are the spitting image of your father. We grew up together and we raised to power together too. We fought our way in war together. Still, he managed to irritate me more times than not. But despite all this, I knew he had an annoying tendency to have some valid points."

I... What?

He walks away and opens the door to my rooms.

I look very confused at the Five Elites entering my chambers.

Before the door is closed I also catch a glimpse or Riyo who is wanting in the hallway.

"I..." Don't understand.

"Just like your father, you managed to be very, very irritating. But your father was indispensable, as his bloodline is, who you are the only living heir off. And maybe there was a faint bit of truth to what you said."

I am outright staring. This cannot be!

"I need you to have a child, Zaretha, because I need the linage of the Wayatashir to continue. I doesn't need to be mine, it just needs to have powerful magic."

He didn't bring them here to execute me, they are here to...

"No. You cannot do this," I whisper. Though I know very well that he can and he will.

At least Riyo is not here.

"Your Highness," says Mauro and sneers. Yes, I remember your dislike me from our last encounter.

"Now you will get to test your assumption," says the Emperor.

I read once a story of the quor, the desert people, about how a straw broke a camel's back.