Betrayal rose to Charmaine's chest like bile, because how could they? How could they sit there and be smug while she takes the brunt of it all. They played her like a tool, played to the only few sentiments that she has.
She should've known how it would have ended.
What ingrates! What hypocrites!
She would have yelled this words at the top of her lungs if not for the gag blocking her from speaking her piece. Her struggling rattles the chains on her wrists and for the guard to forcefully push her forward to the execution stand. Charmaine stumbles with her weak legs, causing her to fall to her knees at the podium.
The guard insolently clicks his tongue at her in distaste and she replied with glare, her poison green eyes causing chills at the coward's spine, but he resolutely takes hold of her wrist behind her back, keeping her bowed. Yet she keeps her chin up, fallen noble she may be but she'll keep her dignity no matter how tattered it is.
(She won't let them see her bow down, she will never let them get the satisfaction.)
Charmaine can feel dozen of eyes upon her, watching in disdain, amusement, vindication and hatred, her audience in attendance are a mix bag of the common folk and the insidious nobles. Their noisy din is grating to the ears, speaking nothing but snide remarks and curses at her back, insults that fall flat at their level of elementary creativity.
Amongst those insidious nobles are the vicious snakes and traitors she once called friends and accomplices, laughing at her behind gloved hands and embroidered hands.
(How have she not seen it all in hindsight? Was she blinded by their kind words? Their weakness and incompetence pushed her to rise to protect and help, yet this is what she gets in return, an escape villainized beast to keep their facade of innocence as victims rather than driving forces.)
(Charmaine is truly foolish for falling for their acts, she'll give them that for winning this game, but she's a sore loser so Charmaine is unashamed to curse them to their faces. They truly accomplished the act of weaponized incompetence.)
How quaint, to treat her death as a play to behold, after all, Charmaine De Himmel is a great villainess and her role in the story is finally ending. But this is reality, they must find it intriguing and amusing to witness and be a part of the 'play' even as a nameless background character. Their little brains must be jumping in joy at the shot of stimuli at this farce of a performance.
(At this point, she lost her fear for her looming death, all her being and emotions are fully placed in hating and cursing the people who betrayed her, dirty traitors that they are.)
The weather is unfortunately sunny, the vast blue of the sky clear with lingering wispy clouds, an awfully beautiful day for her execution. The clean nobles are seated in their own named places according to their status and who's close to who while the common rabble stand below their stands.
Charmaine glares at all of it with the indignation of a scorned woman. Gazes avert the path of her line of sight, either fearful or uncomfortable, with a good few glaring back in disdain or staring in satisfaction at what befallen her. How the mighty has fallen, they must be saying to themselves.
Footfalls came to her right, her head swiveling to that direction to watch the Imperial Minister, Viscount Gletscher, came into view, an air of indifference around him. He walks towards her kneeling form, not once looking at her.
Well, that's to be expected, that had been his general reaction to everything, stiff and formal, not a strand of hair out of place, face stony, a perfect mask of disinterest. He'd always been like that even as a child.
(Charmaine pities him, serving an incompetent crown prince as a master, she should know, he had been exposed to that fool's idiocy since she was a toddler.)
"Today we stand in attendance to the execution of Lady Charmaine De Himmel for treason."
Charmaine internally scoffs, rolling her eyes. Treason, my beautiful backside.
"Any last words Lady Charmaine De Himmel?" The ice-like Viscount asks before carefully pulling away the dirty dishcloth shoved in her mouth, it's probably the kindest gesture she had received for months.
The hands on her back lets go, their crushing grip disappearing. Charmaine raises her bowed upper body, chin up, posture regal in its grace.
The voices of the masses quietens down, eager to hear the last words that would fall from the infamous De Himmel. As much as her beauty was famous in high society, it is her barbed silver-tongue she was truly known for, so all are eager to hear what she would impart at her denouement.
The fallen noble lady smiles wide and full at her audience, matted and dirty blue hair obscuring most of her gaunt and bruised figure, yet her arsenic green eyes remained hauntingly visible.
"I..."
Her voice is raspy from disuse, yet its weight remained the same. She raises her chin even higher.
"I will wait for all of you in hell."
Then she laughs, full bodied hoarse cackles, shaking her whole with mirth, amused at the glimpse of her audience discomfort and disturbed countenance.
Somebody yells to proceed on to the execution, most likely her idiot of an ex-fiancé and current crown prince who only has that position because of her.
Charmaine remains laughing as she was pushed down once more to prostrate herself, her chilling laughter cutting off once the blade of the executioner falls, an off-putting silence engulfing the whole plaza as the villainess' body goes down with a thud, yet her haunting words still echoing in their minds like a curse.
No one rejoiced, for fear in invoking the woman's last words, for her decapitated body to rise and take them with her if they uttered the wrong words.
It might have been Charmaine De Himmel who was executed to her gruesome end, but her last words ring like a death sentence to those who watched her perish, the church bells a resounding death knell to support the curtain's fall.