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{CoRW: Book 3} Interlude XV: A Crown of Defeat *Rough Draft* [Final Chapter]
🕑 Added 2023-03-25 15:09:27 +0000 UTCInterlude XV: A Crown of Defeat
There was something liberating about the sea. Perhaps it was that the seemingly endless, unhindered landscape of glittering water reminded Eleanora so much of the red dunes of Ventrayna. The once Crown Princess of Lafeara stood on the shoreline, one boot an inch deep in the saturated pebble-sand mixture below, gazing out at the teal-green skyline. The playful screeches of seagulls pierced through the constant thrum of the wind and the soothing crash of waves that struck the large boulders ahead of her with steady repetition. Eleanora’s heart drummed at an even faster pace, adrenaline still high from her escape, drowning in the emotion of all that lay behind and before her.
‘Am I free?’
The thought teased against the tired muscles of her neck, shoulders, and back. Eleanora stared down at the sudsy salty water that swirled around her boot, sinking it just a hair deeper with each engulfing pull.
‘What happens now?’
The repetitive thought shivered through her stomach as she turned to where Marco had tied their horses to a nearby water oak that spiraled over a shallow dune of stone, moss, and sandy soil. Eleanora smiled as her ever-optimistic cousin plodded through the shadow waves to join her on a nearby rock.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered as he passed her the jacket she had abandoned while the sweat of their early morning ride had kept her warm.
“You said that already,” Marco muttered with an easy smile as he stretched his legs and back. “So, this is what the ocean looks like.”
“First time?”
“I didn’t have many opportunities to travel, even after coming here.” The Viscount ran a hand through the luminous mop of messy black curls that clung to his face and neck. “Seems like a good idea, though—right about now.”
“Running away?”
He nodded, hazel-blue eyes meeting her amber gaze with a tentative smile. “No reason to stay here now, and neither of us can go back to—” He looked away, lips struggling to form a smile as he blinked against the rising sunset. “We could go to Strugna. It’s somewhere over there.”
“The Water Coven’s aren’t exactly fond of Fire Witches,” Eleanora retorted with a snort.
“We’re not exactly witches—are we?”
His words stung, as much as Eleanora wished they didn’t, but given what Marco had lived through—she hardly had any reason to complain. She had been raised in relative splendor as a future Crown Princess and Queen of Lafeara, whereas her cousin—had been lucky to survive.
“Perhaps we should,” Eleanora murmured as she folded her arms against her chest.
Truthfully the idea of traveling, surrounded by nothing but water, sent her stomach spinning. The idea of drowning was—unpleasant.
‘Though compared to what I can expect if the Emperor ever catches up to me—I suppose that might be preferable.’
“Not sure how long I could stay away,” Marco muttered absently as he loosened his feet from the sinking sand. “I’d need to be back by spring at the latest.”
“Whatever for?” Eleanora snorted in amusement.
“I have to harvest my vineyards.” Her cousin scowled at her confused frown. “I’m a Viscount now. I have lands I’m responsible for, and I was looking forward to smashing grapes beneath my feet.”
“You-you’re joking—right?”
Marco’s sharp gaze bore into her silently before his lips twitched with a suspicious smile. “Yes. I’m joking. What the hell do I know about running a territory? I’m only good for drinking, partying, and helping my dear cousin smile.”
Eleanora laughed, relieved and far too distracted to notice the shadow beneath her cousin’s smile. As surprised as she had been when Marco showed up with the Burning Blade to join her rebellious getaway, she had been more than relieved to find a familiar face among her new traveling companions.
‘Perhaps this was Maura’s way of apologizing for stealing Hana away from me.’
She smirked, pulling free the stubborn strands of hair that had slid between her lips as she turned to stride up the beach.
“Heading back?” Marco called out as he strolled behind her leisurely.
“Before we make plans to travel, I’d like to enjoy some rest and quiet here at the villa.”
“That sounds—rather dull.”
“Perhaps you might occupy yourself digging up a few aged bottles in the cellar upon our return.”
He grunted, offering a hand as they climbed up the slippery dune. “Maybe Sir Iker will have news from the palace.”
Eleanora’s horse danced beside her as she grabbed the reins sharply. “It’s too soon for that, surely. The capital is miles away.” She steadied the mare, then climbed into the saddle promptly, where she waited as Marco adjusted his stirrups before joining her.
Eleanora didn’t want to think about anything beyond the ocean and the villa built beside it. She couldn’t think about Nicholas without feeling the urge to vomit and scream simultaneously. Even if she knew the King had every right to marry again if he wished or chose another woman as his queen—Eleanora just couldn’t accept it.
‘Everything I sacrificed. Everything I endured—just to be replaced before we were even married a year.’
She swatted the tangled locks of licorice-black hair from her face and eyes, then turned the mare back towards the forest path they had taken. Marco followed behind, unusually silent. Normally Eleanora would have done her best to appease him and return her sweet cousin to good spirits, but she lacked any light or hope to share.
The sharp clop of the horses’ shoes against the trail leaves and stones helped lull her mind back into comforting, numb nothingness. Occasionally, in the distance, she would see small clusters of sparrows bursting from the prickly brambles of mangrove trees that had overgrown much of the terrain around the path ahead. Although Eleanora knew the veterans of the Burning Bush still followed them, not once had she caught so much as a glimpse of their shadows.
“Our host is keeping a close watch,” Marco muttered with apparent disapproval.
“Sir Iker means no harm, I’m sure,” Eleanora replied dismissively. “And we may yet need their protection.”
“What could a bunch of broken, crippled men possibly due against the Royal Knights or Arius Fire Witches?”
“Marco!” She hushed urgently. “There is no reason to speak that way.”
“I’m just not sure why you trust any of them. They never let us leave their sight, even for a moment. I can’t even visit the toilet without one of them breathing on the other side of the door!”
“They’re not that bad!”
Her cousin scoffed. “I’m starting to suspect we’re their prisoners more than their guests. They—” Marco frowned as he sniffed the breeze that stirred through the branches of cypress, pine, and oak around them. “Elly—can you smell that.”
Eleanora pulled her mare to a halt as she turned towards the breeze, frowning as the scent of iron and brimstone coated her nostrils. The cold prickle of nostalgia twisted her guts in a vice as the familiar burning visage of sun-hawks soared above the canopy, heading in the direction of the villa.
“Kritanta’s flame,” Marco hissed as his horse jostled to a halt beside her. “If those scouting birds are here, than the Emperor’s troops can’t be far behind.”
“How—why?” Eleanora hissed out as her mind struggled to copulate the somewhat complex process of breathing and forming coherent sentences.
‘Why are they here? How could they be here?’
It took at least a week by caravan to travel from the border to the heart of Ventrayna.
‘How could Emperor Arius know of my escape already?’
The familiar tendrils of panic and paranoia coiled behind her glazed amber eyes as Eleanora clutched her throbbing chest. Had Maura betrayed her one final time? Was this Percy’s plan to remove her as an obstacle to the Lafearian throne? No. Even if the Emperor had a spy among the Covens, Maura kept a clear boundary between her plans and Percy’s ambitions.
“Elly? Eleanora!”
Marco’s grip on her shoulder shook Eleanora free from her spiraling thoughts. She looked down at her saddle and laughed at the simple dagger at her hip and the utter lack of coin to buy passage to safety.
‘I should have never relaxed—not even for a second.’
“What do we do?” Her cousin pressed with a glimmer of relief as she straightened in her saddle.
“We return to the villa and warn Sir Iker, grab what we can, then return to the coastline and find the nearest shipping dock.”
“I don’t think we should—”
Elenora ignored his words as she kicked the mare's sides, urging the startled creature into a maddening gallop as she leaned in close to its still glistening neck.
‘Even if the sun-hawk had spotted them and turned back to relay their location—it would take a few hours at best for the Scorpions Army to find me. They’re not used to dealing with dense forests, nor are they as fast as the Air Covens.’
She glanced over her shoulder just once to confirm Marco was following, however far behind, then stared straight ahead. She blinked away the tears that burned against her amber eyes. The overgrown trees and brush parted ahead to reveal the villa's sunbathed, stone-cobbled walls.
The brown mare beneath Eleanora squealed in protest as her rider jerked the reins back sharply. Six witches in their glistening black-armored suites with their scorpion-tail-shaped helmets stood in stark contrast to the peaceful floral surroundings of the estate. Their officer, whose gold and crimson cloak matched the wings of the sun hawk perched on her raised fist, turned from the Master Blacksmith before her to face the runaway princess.
It had been several years since Eleanora had last had the displeasure of standing before Duke Tyrell’s pompous, pureblood brats. Yet, she recognized Isleen Tyrell’s calculating coal-grey eyes in an instant.
“Your Highness,” Isleen greeted with a note of annoyance as she strode down the gravel pathway. “How kind of you to spare us the trouble.”
Eleanora didn’t need to ask what they were doing there. The answer was obvious. And she, like an idiot, had delivered herself up on a silver platter.
Isleen’s smile twisted into the confident smirk of a predator who had paralyzed her prey with fear. The long braids of her onyx hair glistened with amber stone, gold beads, and rubies that adorned the Scorpion Army’s fiercest witches. Eleanora blinked in confusion as her gaze fell upon the medallion that pinned the pureblood’s cape in place, the Emperor’s symbol of a scorpion replaced by that of what appeared to be a dragon.
‘The Empress’s crest?’
No, Duke Zenon might be an arrogant fool, but he wasn’t stupid. The Empress’s father had always taken great pains to address the reptilian sigil he had chosen as a lizard or serpent, never a dragon. While the late Duke’s eldest son, Titus, had clear ambitions for the throne through his sister, Alexandria had always kept a tight leash on her brother and coven.
‘But—that is clearly a dragon.’
Isleen was now barely two yards away. The six Ventrayna witches around her had also moved forward subtly to surround Eleanora, who remained frozen upon her nervous mare.
“Elly!” The sound of steel being drawn free preceded Marco’s appearance as her cousin foolishly lunged between the transfixed princess and the advancing pureblood with his sword drawn. His stallion jostled the mare, which in turn snapped Eleanora from her stupor.
Isleen blew a gust of fire from her wrist into the stallion’s face. The panicked beast skidded sharply to the side while Marco swung wildly for the pureblood’s head. Isleen deflected the blow with her metal arm guard. The Lafearian steel clanged harmlessly off the witch-steel armor as the pureblood latched onto Marco’s wrist, then dragged the startled half-witch from his saddle.
“Marco!”
Despite being winded, her cousin reached for his fallen sword, which Isleen quickly kicked aside before shoving the half-witch onto his back. The pureblood pressed her boot against his chest and clicked her tongue in disapproval.
“Settled down, half-witch. I have no interest in offending Ambassador Zenon or my brother by harming you accidentally.”
Marco coughed weakly in protest before twisting his head in Eleanora’s direction. “What are you doing? Run!”
Isleen laughed. “There’s nowhere left for you to run, Princess. So why don’t you come down and join your cousin and me inside for a nice glass of Caligo wine?”
“Poisoned?” Eleanora retorted hoarsely as her fingers curled around the dagger at her belt.
The pureblood rolled her eyes with an exaggerated sigh. “I don’t know what sort of dramatic scenario you’re playing out inside that empty head of yours, but I was not sent to harm you, Eleanora.”
“Not now, anyway.”
“Honestly,” Isleen growled as she removed her boot and stepped forward to allow two of her subordinates to secure Marco between them. “You were brave enough to defy the Emperor and attempt to run away to who knows where but now you won’t even join me for a glass of wine?”
“So you can drug me and deliver me to the Emperor for punishment?”
The pureblood’s brows and the corner of her lips twitched slightly, confirming Eleanora’s fears.
“If that is your true intention, I’d prefer to choose my own way out. Thank you.”
Amber flames flooded Isleen’s cold gray eyes as Eleanora yanked the small dagger free and held it to her throat. The pureblood clenched her fists in apparent frustration before raising her hands to her waist and tilting her gaze away from the princess to the Ventrayna witches around her. “What do you want, Eleanora?”
“Let Marco go.”
“No.”
Eleanora blinked in stunned surprise. “W-why not?”
“Because he’s too important to someone I care about to put at risk for your stupidity,” Isleen shot back sharply. “In case it wasn’t abundantly clear, we’re not here for you, Eleanora. We just happened to hear about Lafeara’s—recent change in monarchy when we crossed the border. Sir Iker’s man was waiting for us on the other side with news of your new residence.”
‘Then—’ Eleanora could feel the blood rushing to her ears as the meaning behind the pureblood words sank in, ‘It was the Burning Blade who betrayed me. And the Covens succeeded in dethroning Nicholas?’
“But—then—why are you in Lafeara?”
“You mean, what could be more important than your pathetic little life?”
Eleanora flinched at the pureblood’s apparent scorn.
“How about the Lafearian Throne? Or the life of the Pope? Or even—the immortal heart of the Scarlet Witch, Kirsi.”
‘What?!’
“So go on, kill yourself, and spare me from the mundane task of babysitting yet another worthless half-witch,” Isleen continued with a dismissive, taunting wave at the dagger the princess held. “I had promised to deliver you to Tristan alive—but I can hardly be blamed for your rash decisions.”
Eleanora’s grip on the dagger tightened so suddenly that blood trickled down her rosewood skin as her vision blurred. “T-tristan?”
The pureblood’s gaze narrowed on the shallow cut before she moved forward determinedly to grab the princess’s wrist, then yanked the dagger free.
“Tristan—he—he’s alive? No. He—he can’t be….”
“You’ll see for yourself soon enough,” Isleen replied curtly as she pulled Eleanora firmly from the saddle. The pureblood cut a strip of cloth from the pale princess’s jacket and pressed the fabric to the bleeding wound on her neck. “The Crown Prince has asked me to keep you here until he returns from Bastiallano.”
Hope, joy, rage, and anguish flooded through Eleanora’s dazed mind as she struggled once more between breathing—and simple thought. The paralyzing beauty of her temporary refuge, the scent of war and blood, and the unshakable suffocating weight of guilt pushed a strangled sob from her throat before the princess’s legs gave out, and Eleanora collapsed to wail helplessly at Isleen’s feet.
