1.1 CHAPTER EIGHT: THE BREAKING POINT
"Good morning, my lady," Maya greeted chirpily as she walked in with a tray. "Here is your medicine right on time,"
Karme was pacing around the room, suffering from morning sickness. She could not stand lying down, despite an adamant wish from Maya that she would. She thanked the older woman and took the bowl off of the tray. She raised it towards her face and wrinkled her nose at the smell.
"I swear, Maya, there is something different with this," she noted.
"But the cleric never said anything to me, my lady. Should I ask him the next time he comes?"
Karme nodded as she drank her medicine. "Please, do. . ." she trailed off as a sharp pain assailed her.
She froze.
Porcelain shattering echoed around the small room Karme called her own. She stood, in the middle of her room, with blood flowing between her thighs. Her whole being had never hurt so bad as it did at the moment.
Maya shrieked at the scene as she hurried for the door and screamed for help. Karme could not stop the tears that flowed freely down the side of her face. Even without the cleric, she knew she had just lost her child.
Like everything that was hers, her joy only lasted a mere few weeks before it was taken away from her.
And in that very moment of weakness, Karme wanted her father.
"My father. . .," Karme whispered, but Maya heard. "Where is he?"
"At the library, my lady," Maya answered, confused. "But that is not important. Please, stay here! I will fetch the cleric!"
Karme shook her head as she started to walk in the direction of the library. Maya followed, protesting for her to stay in her room and lie down. But her pleas fell on deaf ears as Karme trudged towards her destination.
Upon reaching the library, Maya implored her to return to her room. But Karme knocked and announced herself, seeking an audience with the duke. Who, surprisingly, accepted her request and told her to come in. Karme's heart swelled, hoping that her father had changed.
Even just a little.
But as she walked into the room and saw her father, she instantly knew what he had done.
His expression, the same as Krianna's the night in the garden, was condescending and vain. As if Karme was merely a bug, they could not be bothered with.
". . .how?" she asked, her voice breaking as her hand wrapped protectively around her empty womb. "How could you?"
The duke had not even looked in her direction as he continued to read the book he was holding. "Your husband had already abandoned you. And you want to raise his child alone? I shall have no more disgrace from you, Karme,"
"Disgraced?" she exclaimed. "It's my child!"
"Enough, Karme!" the duke reprimanded, his voice raising as he slammed the book close. An action in which Karme was conditioned to fear. But the lady stood still on her feet, staring at her father straight in the eyes.
"I always have...always begged for your love. The love you were so adamant about keeping away from me. But I've never asked for anything. The things mother had left for me and yet you've given to Krianna, I had never said a word," her voice hoarse as she had yet to stop crying.
"Yet you still took my child from me? The one thing that is truly mine, and you destroyed it!" she lamented.
As Karme expressed everything weighing her down, blue lightning started crackling all over her body. The duke jumped to his feet, his chair falling down. Karme was not supposed to be able to use her magic. He had made sure of that. As his daughter slowly walked towards him, Arsene was forced to take a step back.
"Ho. . . how? I made sure–"
"I know," Karme interrupted. "I know the bitter medicine you force me to drink once every fortnight was to suppress this magic of mine. I knew, yet I had never said a word and continued to drink it. That was how much I wanted you to accept me, father. But no more,"
As Karme closed the distance between them, the lightning crackled much stronger. More substantial than it had been each second that passed. The duke fell to the floor. The air in the room was so thick one could slice through it. She raised a hand to reach for the duke, but she stopped. She faltered in her step and fell on her knees when she saw the fear in her father's eyes.
The lightning that was covering her vanished.
"Do not look at me as if I am a monster, father," she cried, hiding her face behind her hands. "All I ever wanted was for you to love me,"
While Karme continued to weep, the duke slowly stood up from where he fell and took his sword out of its sheath disguise as his walking stick. With no remorse whatsoever in his eyes, he brought his blade down toward his grieving daughter.
But another figure jumped between them. Karme peeked out from her fingers, and her orbs widened as she saw her father's blade slashed cleanly through the small body of her friend.
"Maya!" she screamed as she caught the older woman. "No, no, no," she cried as she pressed into Maya's wound to try and stop the bleeding.
Maya coughed crimson, but there was a smile on her lips. She raised a bloodied hand and cupped Karme's cheek lovingly like a mother would to a daughter. "Killing your father will not erase what he has done to you, my lady," she coughed again, and Karme panicked. "I hate. . . for you to become just like him. I wish for you. . . the life you've always wanted. The life you so deserve,"
Karme shook her head as new tears fell. "I don't want it if you're not in it, Maya. So, please,"
Maya laughed, but it was cut short as she coughed blood once more. "Please, my lady, I beg of you… to run away…from here,"
She removed her hand that was holding Karme and reached to her chest. She shakily pulled the flimsy necklace off and gave it to Karme with a smile. "I will always be with you, Karme. Whenever and wherever you may be,"
As Maya closed her eyes to never open once more and her last breath left her body, Karme could not help but scream her pain. As her voice deafened her ears, a loud, earth-shattering sound deafened her father's. Half of the library was decimated to nothing, but dust as a rain of blue lightning crashed through the castle walls.
And upon the carcass of what used to be Karme's access outside of the prison she grew up in, a literal portal out of her nightmare opened up for her. With the unsettled dust floating around her came a lithe figure with a hand reaching toward Karme.
"Grasp my hand, and I shall take you out of here, my child," the stranger offered. "My name. . . is Celeste,"
Karme looked up and saw the galaxy twirling in the orbs of an ethereal woman.