The Monocle's Eye

Chapter 17

 To say I was furious would be a great understatement. Laid to rest less than a year ago, less than even half a year, to be woken by a spindly rauzire shaking with determination in my tomb, a glass of blood in his hand, and his neck unscarred. And beyond all this, I graciously gave him a change to explain his pitiful self, mostly because I figured it would amuse me for a time before I ripped his head off and drank straight from the spine. Yet when I heard him out, he was justified in awaking me, and beyond that, I was simultaneously modified and angered, slipping like fog through the halls and arriving at her doorway, only to hear her say what would not have been wrong to consider the most ridiculous statement in the history of communication.

"Can what?" The girl replied as I entered, her voice desperate and shy. I could see what Illy liked about her sure, but she was much more trouble than she was worth for me, and I had not raised that child to disregard all the world the moment a shiny drop of red catches her eye.

"Can live, without you." She replied slowly, her voice soft and cautious.

"Well I for one, think you're gonna have to." I broke the silence like glass, and they both turned abruptly to it's source at the doorway. Mortification consumed them as they stared upon me, their Queen.

"Who awoke you, Mother?" Illy asked, her voice trembling. Had she dulled this much since I spent time with her to ask such stupid questions. That wretched little child stepped closer to her, trying to shelter myself from me, as though there was any hope. I'de already have her head off if that was what I wanted, she was living proof of the only thing I found repugnant to face, but a corpse isn't quite as fun as a living body, filled with's crimson possibilities.

"Are you not happy to see me, your own mother? A little birdie woke me. They told me I might have some cleaning to do, but I told them that often times when I clean, in the end, the floor ends up dirtier than when I began, but the birdie seemed alright with that. Are you alright with that, my beloved little devil?" I replied to her stupid question anyway. Now she was shifting closer to that child, as though the little bird might protect her from her own Queen. I almost laughed out loud at them, standing together in stupidity, as though they had some chance of success. That child might be stronger than me but she is far less refined, and far more yielding than myself, the meagre utterance of betrayal and she's up in arms by my side.

"No Mother, I can't say I'm terribly happy about it." Now her voice shook too, like the faint children as they answer questions. This was not the type of interesting I had wished for.

"Then you'll disobey? Disobey your Queen, disappoint your Mother, commit treason against your country, all for the nefarious wretch that wretched your own family's happiness?" I gawked at them, stepping forward to advance, thinking my battle, if you might call it that, almost won. But the curtain flared with a large gust of wind, almost obscuring them at the edges. I waved my hand and slammed it shut, but as the curtains fell away in white wisps of fabric, a figure emerged. For a moment, if there was one thing I was sure of, it was that I was mad, because there, beside the closed, cracked window pane, stood my betrothed.

Her pale lips were cracked and worn, her face of a gastly pallor and her black hair was long and windblown. Her limps were boney and distraught, and she wore only a white death robe, yet in the tired glow of her big blue eyes, I knew who she was. In her stature, in her scent as it wafted towards me, in her being as I sensed it, in her everything, I knew who she was. I stumbled back almost unconsciously as she spoke.

"No, Mortemine, I do not ask you spare me, not abandoned, dirty me. I'll die in moments anyway, for I've not had poison, and without your lips, it does little for me anyway." Her voice was cracked and horse, but I could still hear her sweet tone coming through, and before I remembered what it was she did to me, what she took from me, I almost raced forward to hold her up. "Spare my child, for all she's done, anything she might of done, she's not wretched or nasty, I kept that burden to myself. That child is pure, and whatever you do you must not touch her." She swayed back and forth like a leaf in the wind.