[Valentine Contest Entry 2017] The Immortal Royalty

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

“Is that all you have to say? After all we’ve endured?”

Vendrick and Mara were quite the pair, people would say. Their onlookers would peer with envy if they would do so much as gaze into each other’s eyes with a hivemind, only to instinctively snap their sights elsewhere out of embarrassment.

They would say their first acquaintance together—the first moment they laid eyes upon each other, it was probably love at first sight.

Or was it fate, perhaps?

What a sick and cliche joke.

Vendrick coughed out a pained chuckle, holding his gut, and Mara looked on at him, puzzled.

“You’re so uncouth for a King, I tell you,” she commented, frustration clear in her voice.

Vendrick looked on at the sky, watching as the clouds and sun practically collided with each other, creating a show of gold and orange. It was like a dance of the cosmos, something those of the ascendant could bear to experience first-hand. He was almost jealous. The view from down there was feasible enough after all.

Right, it was already noon, he thought. A defeated look found his countenance.

“Ahaha. Forgive me, Your Highness.”

“For what? I have no right to judge. Your personality is the least of my worries with how—”

“Not that. I mean that I’m sorry… with how everything had went down.”

“Could you not?”

“What?”

“Be noble for once.” Mara scoffed, and snapped her gaze away. “A bit too late for that, don’t you think?”

For about half a second Vendrick had forgotten. He passed a glance to the land before him; his brows furrowed with irritation as he saw more than a thousand bodies of his own men, scattered callously about the field. Some of them were soldiers he personally knighted, and more than enough of them were names he never bothered to know. Slaughtered, cut down in their pride, waving a flag in his name.

Over a thousand.

Vendrick was responsible for over a thousand deaths—men with friends and families, who swore an oath to him. For the first time in his life a feeling of dread washed over him, and his stomach began to churn.

Perhaps it was the swords, protruding through both their abdomens.

Indeed. Blood, already dried, pooled beneath them. The rest of it was laid down in two adjacent murky trails along the battlefield, leading to the both of them.

Vendrick turned back to Mara, expecting her to either wear some smug look or chide him for being so careless. She always was the type to do that, especially when he needed the reminder that he was King of a land. She didn’t do either.

Instead she looked defeated, drained even. The King didn’t consider that she was in the same sinking boat with her.

With a slow and collected wheeze, she sighed, and peered up at the sky as well. “Do you suppose that it is fate as well... for us to end up in such a predicament?” Her voice was raspy as she said this. “Do you believe that perhaps instead of engaging in an eternal feud, we could have wedded like initially planned?”

“I wouldn’t want to point fingers, but you were the one who wanted to go to war.”

“It’s not like I truly wanted to, you know.”

“Oh?”

“I was carrying a burden on my shoulders and I didn’t know what to do.”

“Well, there’s always talking out your problems, Your Highness.”

There was an extended silence, mulling over the two like a mood-killing cloud.

The Queen’s breathing had become rasped and her vision hazy.

She didn’t have much time left.

“Ven, please.”

“What?”

“A favor.”

“Name it.”

“Cast what remains of your etiquette aside… and call me by my name. For once.”

The man pivoted his head to the left, gazing upon Mara as if she had grown a second head. If there was a word to describe his expression, †˜bewilderment’ would be on the money.

“Why?” he asked.

“A dying request?” Mara’s words were laced with irritation. “Seeing as how neither of us will miraculously stand up and walk away from this place of blood and desolation, we might as well say our goodbyes now.”

Vendrick hummed, placing a hand to his stomach. The steel of Mara’s blade was well-tempered, durable, sharp to the very touch. It was a wonder why he didn’t die the moment he was stabbed.

“Sort of a hard goodbye if you ask me.”

“Ven...—”

“I… I don’t even know how to say goodbye, especially to someone whom I thought I once loved,” he began, “If it weren’t for this damn feud—we could have remained as one. Is fate out to get us, I wonder? Were we just in it’s decrepit schedule, having split the kingdoms in two, only to watch it come tumbling down without either side to support it?”

There was silence. Vendrick assumed Mara was only listening to his rambles.

“When you left, I… I never once said goodbye to you. Every fiber of my being wanted to deny that you had gone from my side. None of this was your fault. I am the fool in this pair.”

“Ve…ndrick.”

From his peripheral vision, he had seen an outreached hand approach, only to fall futilely to the ground. The Queen’s strength began to fail her rapidly.

King Vendrick, the foolish Royal quickly took up his former bride’s hand; desperation clear in his movements. His lungs felt like they were going to burst from his chest with this.

“No… no, wait. Hold on… please, don’t—”

“Ven...dri...”

Her head slumped.

With one final drag of her lungs, she let out a silent rattle.

Queen Mara lived no more.

All she wanted was for Vendrick to say her name. Just once, and he couldn’t even do that much. How tragic, a dying wish never fulfilled.

Mara’s lukewarm hand sat limply in Vendrick’s palm, and he clenched it as roughly as he could manage in refusal to release. Her lips, her pale face; the King wanted to feel them once more to his own.

“That’s not fair… that’s not fair at all…”

By her hand, Vendrick yanked at the corpse.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

“Mara… yell at me, or tell me how much of a fool I’m being. I deserve it. One last time, please.”

With one final yank, Mara’s body fell over onto the ground, her still-open eyes and agape mouth peering at Vendrick.

All he could do was weep, and curse the heavens, yelling Mara’s name to the sky with venom in his tongue, malice in his lungs, and hatred in his heart. His profane words echoed through the world, without a care of who would hear them. He cared not. As far as he was concerned, at least it would be known that even after death, his bride’s uttered name would be heard, and passed on forever.