Tampered Beauty

Bank

"Francis, please, you must calm down!" Catherine begged as she ran to keep up with her incensed eldest son. His jaw was locked tight, eyes red and crazed with fury.

"How can I, mother?!" he spat. "The mother of my bastard tried to kill my wife!" he roughly jerked his black velvet covered arm from his mothers' grasp, seething in rage as he marched right up to the tower's door. Catherine rose her skirts in an attempt to catch up to her son, but Francis was having none of it.

"How could you do this?!" Emperor Francis de Valois-Angoulême roared as he shoved open the doors to the tower's cell and headed straight for it's occupant, his strides long and frequent, eyes wide and crazed like never before, an anger surged in his veins, brighter than any Barth and deeper than any ocean. He moved like a raged bull, gripping the traitorette by under her jaw and slamming her roughly against the wet stone walls. Lola squeaked in alarm, her own teal orbs expanding as she looked at the enraged Emperor's who looked about ready to snap her neck. Francis seethed, hissing in through his teeth, his jaw locked tight as the grip underneath her jaw increased and increased. It was sure to bruise. But Francis didn't give a damn.

Catherine gasped at the roughness her son showed. Her calm, patient, understanding son now treated the woman who had birthed him his first son with the roughest touch, far from the gentle caress he had treated his wife to just mere minutes ago.

"Francis! Francis, please let me-"

"No!" the enraged King roared into her face, saliva spraying from his lips in the most beastly way. "Do not interrupt me! Do not care try and justify it with another excuse!" he screamed. "You tried to kill my wife, your Queen! How dare you! After everything she did for you!" he roared, his eyes crazed with rage, the hand gripping his whore's jaw trembling as it tightened further. "After everything we've done for you, this is how you repay?!" he roared.

"No, no!" Lola cried, tears slipping down her face, moistening his hand. "It's not like that, Francis! Please believe me, I would never harm Mary!" Her hands reached for Francis' torso, trying to push him away, assisting Catherine's fruitless attempts to loosen his grip on Lola, but it was equally as fruitless.

He laughed harshly, jerking her back and forth. "Do you honestly think I am that stupid?!" he bellowed. "Do not lie to me!" he got even closer to her. Lola gasped in pain and tears, the hand grasping her jaw tightening so much that it felt like it would snap in half.

"I'm not, I swear it!" Lola screamed as he jerked her back and forth again. The little traitorette was completley at the violent Emperor's mercy and they both knew it. "I didn't do anything!" she cried through the tears.

"Do not lie to me, Lola!" Francis roared. "The crater with poisoned candles in it has your seal! Who else could it have been?!" he screamed, the other hand gripping a large fist of her hair and jerking it back roughly. "What is this?! You try to remove Mary from my side, hope that I will then marry you and legitimise John as my heir?! Is that what this is? A way to try and use our child to consolidate your own power?!"

"No, no! I-"

"Francis, please, let her go! We can solve this some other way!" the Medici blooded Queen Mother of France begged, but the King of France shook his mother from his arm and continued to berate.

"You tried to kill Mary and Lucien! You tried to assassinate my wife and my son!" he screamed.

"No, no! Francis, please!" Lola cried out. "You're hurting me!"

"I don't care! You deserve it! You deserve everything you put my wife through!" he bellowed, jerking her back and forth roughly, the back of her head smacking against the stone again and again. Lola sobbed in pain and fear.