13 Works by VadeRetro
Listing Works
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Boy 412 trudged after the line of boys on the beach. The night was not yet ended, and already they'd lost two.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. Soldiers did not cry.
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Marcia slipped back down into unconsciousness, her body blacking out to deal with the pain. As the shards of ice in her lungs continued to melt, they sliced and cut their way through thousands of blood vessels. The blood burst forth from the ruptured capillaries like millions of failed dams and mixed with freezing floodwaters. Slowly but steadily, her lungs were filling up.
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It didn’t feel real. None of this did. It was too awful. Surely all of this was a nightmare. Surely soon she’d wake up and eat breakfast in the kitchen with Alther like always. She’d tell him about the dream, he’d give her a hug, and everything would be back to normal. Everything would be okay again. Surely.
“Madam Overstrand?"
No one had ever called her that before. A shiver of dread, cold like ice, ran through her.
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“Oh. Well lucky me.”
Even as she spoke, Marcia hated the callousness in her voice. But at least the rejection and emptiness it dredged up was familiar. It was certainly easier. Better to push him away than to confess that she desperately wanted him close.
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“But I’m a mess,” she whispered, laying her very last card down on the table. She said it not in protest, but rather with a desperate hope that he’d be able to answer that doubt too, the one she’d always been afraid to speak aloud.
“Yes, sometimes you are. And sometimes I am too,” he said. He gave her a small smile and her heart lifted, just a little.
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Marcellus looked down at her with concern. Soothingly, he ran his thumb over her wrist. He really didn’t like to see her hurting like this. Especially not when there was something he could do to help.
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But afterward, when at last Septimus had lifted his head and looked at her, something strange had happened, something she knew she would never forget as long as she lived.
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The light from the golden-tinted windows cast sunbeams across the desk, silhouetting her against the morning sun. He thought that she looked very beautiful, and Marcellus suddenly found himself feeling more than a little faint.
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The adrenaline had not yet worn off; Marcia was trembling badly. The horrible nature of the situation had not really sunk in, but as Marcia stood waiting outside the purple door, it began to. She could feel the weight of what had happened growing heavier and heavier on her shoulders until it was unbearable.
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For a long and hideous moment, Marcia did not understand what she was seeing. Then, at lightning speed, her mind put the pieces together and she clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
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Marcia, horrified, stepped backward, stumbled, and fell onto the soaked cobblestones. The rough stone tore at her hands and somewhere in the back of her mind pain registered, but she hardly noticed it as she scrambled back to her feet.
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She did not have enough time to say more.
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Even so, it was hard not to flinch as Queen Etheldredda walked out of a solid wall and bored her eyes into her son. She stood ramrod straight and scowled down at him, running her eyes over his pathetic, sodden frame. Her graying dark hair hung in scraggly braids past her waist; in a deep red nightgown and robe she cut a terrifying figure. The True Crown, as ever, was perched evenly upon her head.