Temporary Setbacks
He was finally asleep, sprawled across half the bed, tangled in the bedding. He snored, the breath whistling in and out of the slightly opened mouth with a faint rasp.
Even asleep, Van Slanzar de Fanel, king of a country nearly recovered from the vicious attack that had razed it three years ago, reached out for the soft body of his new bride.
Still wakeful, she watched him from the corners of her wide blue eyes. Eventually she disentangled herself from his arms, stealing from the bed. Presently she returned, carrying something long and narrow and glinting keenly in the low light of the bedchamber's lamps.
With a smile that was not at all at home on her delicately crafted face, Celena lifted the knife over her sleeping husband's throat.
It's amazing sometimes what measures the human organism will take to survive, no matter how unpleasant or difficult. The need to keep going propels us forward, sometimes hurtling us from one troublesome situation directly to another.
No one ever told me that being a girl was going to be such hard work. If I had been thinking enough to make the choice, I never would have allowed myself to switch. I would have died first. But, as it turned out, I had no real choice in the matter. The other me asserted herself at a point when I was pretty certain that this was it, and by the time I had reoriented myself, Allen Shezar had his arms wrapped around me and was swearing that he'd never let me go again.
Yeah, it made me squeamish too.
There are certain advantages to being in my position, opportunities that I quickly recognized. For one, no one suspects her of any wrongdoing. They have a distressing tendency to call her an angel. That fop Allen dotes on her. Really, it's enough to make a man sick.
For another, I'm officially dead. There's an amazing freedom in that.
Say what you will about the Shezars--God knows that I do--they are very strong-willed. It took me months to wear her down enough to commandeer control of our shared body. For most of the time, she had no idea I was still there, which was exactly the way I wanted it.
Just so you know, eight and a half months is an awfully long time to have to sit, brood, and be forced to listen to long sessions of Allen baring his soul to his sister. If I weren't already one crazy son of a bitch, as Allen not-so-tactfully put it in a moment of weakness, I would have been by the point I caught her unawares.
By the point I had control again, I had a plan, too.
Stop laughing. I may not be the Strategos, but I've been known to come up with a few good ideas in my time. Of course, a lot of them tend to involve fire, but everyone has his limits.
Anyway, eight months gave me plenty of time to plot revenge. And plot I did.
It was either that or listen to Allen. Which would you choose, honestly?
In retrospect, remaining in her body might have been a tactical error.
She got to have far too much influence over my thinking. It must have been the hormones. Women have an awful lot of those.
I'm pretty sure that girl from the Mystic Moon would have been dismayed by the course I chose. My early regret was that there was simply no way for me to get her, too.
Eventually, I came to understand that my plan had reached her, too, although not quite in the way I had expected. Sometimes I wonder what it must have cost her to give her blessing to Van's marriage to Celena.
Wooing Van took more effort than I've ever had to give anything in my life. The strain of remaining in character through the two years it took to pry his eyes away from the Mystic Moon long enough to look at me--her--without wrapping my dainty little fingers around his throat and squeeeeeezing took a hell of a lot of work. If I hadn't known how satisfying my plan was going to be once it came to fruition, I would have killed him a dozen times over in the first month.
It was a good plan, I swear it was. I don't know what went wrong. Everything was perfect. I had the knife; sated, he was sleeping like a log. I'd memorized the schedule of the bodyguard rotation, and I knew I had a clean shot at escaping. I was even standing over him, having a last minute debate over whether I should risk waking him just to see his expression when he realized his doom. Then it all went wrong.
Chesta had looked like that when he was asleep, all ruffled and gentle and trusting. And Migel had snored ever so slightly. And Dalet had had a similar habit of snuggling his pillow.
And somehow, somewhere along the line, she had gone and fallen in love with him.
Shit.
Standing over her sleeping husband, she glowered at him. "I hate you. I really, really hate you," she snarled softly, as the arm holding the knife dropped slowly to her side.
Van mumbled sleepily. "...'lena? Whatcha you doin'?"
"Watching you sleep, that's all."
"Come back to bed?" His tone was inviting, and a touch mischievous.
"In a moment..." She turned away from the bed, stalking over to the window and sighing.
This is just a setback, Dilandau promised himself. It's only temporary, because I'll find a way around it. And then I'll bathe my hands in his blood. Until then...
"Celena, aren't you cold?"
She dropped the knife into one of the vases of fresh flowers adorning the bridal chamber, promising herself that she'd retrieve it come dawn. She looked back to the bed, smiling. "Coming, love."
end
Written 04/09/2001
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