Ghosts and Shadows

The stars were high tonight.

Annis was sitting on the window sill in her room. It was cold and quiet, but the only thing the Queen of Caerleon was really aware of was the growing numbness inside of her. Even now, she couldn't find herself able to express emotion.

They had brought his body to her at noon.

When she had first seen his head, eyes closed, expressionless and separated from the rest of his body, the sun light had suddenly seemed unbearable, and Annis had to hold herself from vomiting. Not because the cut off head, whom his men – her men now – had the dignity to put on his torso again and stabilize the whole of it with simple linens, no.

She knew she had failed her husband, and in more than one way.

A sharp pain dragged her out of her thoughts. Annis slowly pulled her shaky right hand away from her left hand, which was lying in her lap, and watched little drops of blood pour out of the wounds she had inflicted with the pressure of her nails. She didn't bother to wipe them away.

When he had told her that he would leave for Camelot a few days before his departure, she had slapped him, told him how disgusting he was for being so reckless, how it sickened her how easily he could abandon his own kingdom—She had refused to speak with him until he had finally left. Annis would have slapped him all the same would he still be alive, but after that she would also have told him that she still loved him and just didn't want him to endanger himself.

Now she was disgusted at herself for being blinded by rage and grief – grief for her marriage, grief for the extinct spark that had once made them be happy with each other.

All she had left was a castle full of ghosts, the most important ones of them that of her husband and her own.

When Annis looked at her hands again, and saw the aching bones and weakly pulsing veins hidden beneath pale and aging skin, she asked herself what would now be left of life for her. She was still Queen, yes, and, not to forget, a mother, but she was alone. Not only alone, but lonely, a lonely Queen— she wondered how long it would take for her to break.

(She had been lonely long before Caerleon's death, but now she was truly, for her last companion, hope – hope of setting things right again, the hope of being happy together again —, was gone, too.)

At last, she went to bed, snuggling under the covers only to find the place next to her empty. As her vision blurred and she saw a shadow resembling the shape of her husband's body through salty tears, Annis swore to herself that she would make Arthur Pendragon pay.