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Tendrils of smoke arose from the ghouls surrounding her. Hundreds clamouring through smashed windows, bent open doors, reaching boned fingers toward her. Rae had saved her sister yet the Flower was still so far out of reach. How she’d make her majestic break for it was currently unclear, but she was a schemer. A villain. She had to be, because if she wasn’t, she was royally fucked.
“Rahela~” they crooned in tandem, an orchestra of shrill and croaked voices, stolen from throats of those long dead. The cogs in Rae’s mind whirled, her gauntlets shimmering with untouched power, dimmed in her unskilled hands.
The doors burst open, a figure of sweeping beauty and dread shadowing the grey light spilling past; he cast a stretched shadow that caressed her feet. Blood slickened his brow, dripped from his hair. In one hand, a sword shone, the other gripped the hair of a severed head. This was the Emperor. Her Emperor, her favourite, slathered against bedroom walls with dark evil dancing behind his eyes. Her favourite that she’d defend with the fervour of a soldier, jumping in the trenches to battle her sister in wars of words.
Her Emperor strode across the plains of the throne room, dying each tile beneath his feet red.
The distance between them was sickening. Both not far enough and all too far. He discarded his mask in an instant. When it clattered to the floor, a ghoul dipped low to gather it. The plains of his face had morphed into liquid moonlight, so aggressively pale it made his hair seem pitch black. But Rae found it difficult to focus on his furious gaze, honing on the crimson stitches lacing his neck. This wasn’t just her Emperor, her favourite character, this was a man she’d ruined trying to save him.
And perhaps, because it was the man she’d verbally fought for in her years past, in recent present with Cobra, perhaps because it was the same boy she’d wanted to protect and miserably destroyed, all that welled within her was affection. The urge to hug him so strong it overwhelmed her rationality, her regard for the precious life she’d torn the plot apart to protect.
“You lied to me,” he told her, his voice like flint igniting.
And Rae approached, her arms stretching out.
The Emperor clearly had thousands of more words to pelt at her, of scorn and rightful hate to direct her way. He had every reason to despise her and this time, she’d agree wholeheartedly that he was right. In fact, she might even plead him to do so, to quell the guilt and regret that would haunt the rest of her aching life.
But whatever he wanted to say, whatever he wanted to do, he paused. He allowed her to hug him, hands wound tight against his possessions.
Arms slithered across his back and Rae thanked what little gods were left for his warmth. Watching him fall like a flattened card at her word was a scene that had given her nightmares, knowing all he had left in his heart for her was hate destroyed her. But that was alright, everything was alright.
For a single instant, Rae allowed herself to care for another. To care for the human being so clearly in her arms, breathing, heart pounding, alive.
“My lady-” Key’s words dragged against her ears.
“I fucked up.” Rae’s grip on him tightened. “I fucked up so badly, and there’s nothing I can say for that.” What use was there to villainy if she couldn’t accomplish her goals? The whole point of being a vixen, a debauchery lunatic was winning. Rae wanted nothing more than to win, and winning right now was apologising.
Key said nothing.
She was surprised he allowed her to hold him this long, to thread her fingers between his clothes and tug him close. To listen to his heartbeat, to stroke the pads of her fingers against the nap of his neck. She would have to pull away and face him eye-to-eye, to return to her villainous ways and create a plan grand enough, genius enough, to clutch the Flower of Life and Death between her dainty palms and will herself home.
She had a family waiting for her after all. A real family that consisted of zero characters.
But when she finally relaxed her grip on him and attempted to pull away, Key dropped everything with a clatter and clutched her back. Searing couldn’t cover his intensity, for he was as overwhelming as Antarctic frost, his claws trapping her like a bird slotted into a fresh cage. The more she relaxed her grip, the steadfast his became, a hug so brutal she knew it would bruise. It threatened her breath and forced her off the ground, the only thing left for her to hold onto him.
Key dipped his head into the crook of her neck, his lips against her skin. “You betrayed me,” he said, voice losing the power of absolute command. It was worse, listening to the raw pain tainting his tone.
Rae returned his passion, knotting her fingers through his hair and letting warm blood pour past her palms like fresh water. He was her warm bath, her freezing abyss, her favourite character in mortal flesh.
He was her friend.
And she ruined all of it.
“Tell me you love me.” Steel returned to Key’s voice.
“I-”
“Lie to me,” he demanded. His breath quickened against her skin. “Lie to me. Say you love me.”
No matter its truth, she didn’t want it to be like this. Rae wanted to exchange ‘I love you’ s in emotions steeped in divine ink, words painted so beautifully they could only belong in fiction. She wanted it to be from genuine bleeding hearts, for her ‘I love you’ s to mean the world.
If she said it now, it would mean nothing.
“Say it,” he repeated, louder. Clutching onto her hips and dragging her closer still, her debaucherous body sinfully presenting flesh his way. He didn’t care enough to move, eyes either entangled in skin or hair. At least, that was all she could see, nose skimming his temple. If Rae wanted to, she could take his ear between her teeth. Whatever she said, he’d hear it loud and clear.
“I said everything I could to save you.” Her mind treacherously replayed the incident, to sink into her bones and keep her tethered to the past. Of his final human moments being her betrayal. “I thought pleasing the king would-”
“That isn’t ‘I love you’,” he interrupted her. “Don’t utter his name.” Halfway between a demand and a plea, it was presented to her steeped in desire and fury. She’d hurt him enough- and for her scheming, she shouldn’t go out of her way to anger him further. Rae had done enough angering to suffice his ire for several lifetimes.
He began moving, keeping her in his arms like a favourite teddy bear. She was sat on the king’s throne just behind her, sinking down helplessly as his weight pressed into her, his arms a cage around her waist. With his back bowed, she could peek past his hair at all the ghouls flooding the throne room. Even if, by some miracle, she managed to sneak out of his grasp, there was nothing she could do to escape the hoard to her flower. Her rationality tapped a hammer against her skull. Be the top dog, be the villain and get your prize, don’t be weak and real- because look where being real has gotten you .
She exhaled hard into his ear. She could hear his deep inhales beside hers.
“There’s a thousand things I should’ve done better,” she continued, the pieces of a monologue cobbling together, sewn tight with poorly masked vulnerability. “But I did not lie to you. Not in my real memories, not in my emotions. The needles pouring poison and freezing my organs were real. Losing my hair and family in clumps were real. Having a sister who I bickered with-” her voice trembled so violently it closed up for an instant. Alice was still waiting for her. She could’ve left hours ago and yet Rae abandoned her too. “-and a dad that left was real. It was my life, but Rahela hadn’t lived it.”
She refused to be considered a liar for the worst fucking years of her life, the helpnessness still cleanly topping the hellscape she walked into. Rae licked chapped lips, her throat burning and parched. Key’s breath hitched, his thighs and knees pressed against her shins, hair painting bloodied portraits on her chin, grip marking her skin with bruises. “It was easy to be real with you,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “because I didn’t know you. I didn’t know your thoughts and your heart. I knew you from you, and your past wasn’t a footnote between pages or annexed in fan wikis. It was real. It was yours.” It was time for her to uphold her half of the bargain, and whether Key believed any of it, he hung on her every word. “I love you.”
Key fell silent. One painful moment dragged on, so silent Rae half-believed he wasn’t breathing. His heart hammered away at a vicious pace. She wanted to reach her claws into his chest and calm him.
But the silence made her anxious. It made her believe she failed.
“I love you.” She filled the silence again. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” she croaked in his ear. Reaching a hand to tuck stained locks behind his ear, she chanted her confession like a promise. A promise she would break the moment she held the Flower of Life and Death anew. Another betrayal she’d leave as a scar in his chest.
The Emperor’s grip tightened.
Key had to believe her in this instant. Because the truth was too painful for it not to be, because her lie was too desperate and necessary not to work.
He relaxed, slouching against her.
She breathed out, clenching her eyes closed.
“You were sick?” he asked. Despite the ash and scars in his vocal cords, he sounded childish.
“Cancer,” Rae replied with the whole truth. “It’s a nasty disease. Your own body is eating you from the inside and the only way to help it is to kill everything. To literally freeze your flesh and force the colony to die for a select few.” As if setting the whole burning city alight to kill the ghouls, sacrificing life after life regardless of status. The noble brain cells and commoner skin cells were all treated the same under a needle. “Rahela’s plot was too important for illness, and my illness destroyed everything.”
Her entire life, crumbled after the words of a doctor, because of a sickness she couldn’t feel but knew rummaged under her skin like a flesh-eating worm. It was so painfully unfair, but Rahela was too busy blooming into a crimson flower to get sick . Sickness was beneath a villainess of her beauty, it wouldn’t match her character arc. Her Beauty Dipped in Blood vibes would be ruined for it. Cancer had no such considerations for her.
Key considered her words, rolling them around like pinballs in his head. He released her, transferring his grip to her hands, pinning them on both armrests of the throne.
“My lady,” he crooned, a grin warping a tormented face. The abyss shone in his eyes, the flittering colours of steel, silver, and red.
Oh.
“My evil queen. You lie so beautifully.” His eyes bent like crescent moons, creases pulling his skin together like pulling bleach white silk. “I want to listen to your tales for the rest of our days. I want your lies to become truth.”
In stories, vulnerabilities opened doors to the heart. It made villains see reason, it made friends and old lovers rekindle. Vulnerability here had ruined her too.