The Second Suicide (3/7)

In the bridal chamber that had been prepared for her, Diana lay staring blankly at the ceiling. She had been made a laughingstock before everyone, the target of every pointing finger.

Had Giscard, too, once felt this way?

She had always grieved for the things done to him. She had wanted to shield him from it all. But she had never held the authority to do so.

His revenge was just. And unfortunately, because she herself had belonged to the group that wronged him, this revenge was something she had no choice but to accept.

That was what set Diana apart from others. She might have let herself be wholly selfish and narrow-minded, but in the end she never could. She could separate her own feelings from the facts laid bare before her and pass cold, clear-eyed judgment.

Perhaps it was the crushing duty laid upon her at twelve, after her mother's death.

She had known from the very beginning that emotion and reality had to be kept apart.

And so this defiled honor, this humiliation too, she was bound to accept. The one mercy was that Giscard despised her body.

There would be no mingling of flesh between them, then.

Much suffering awaited her. What lay ahead was hell. Diana sniffled and leaned blankly against the wall.

Then the door burst open.

No. It couldn't be.

Diana shook her head.

Clear, deliberate footsteps echoed through the room. Where the candlelight fell, Giscard's figure came into view.

He was nothing like the man she had seen until now, armored or bundled in heavy clothes. A tall man, with a body huge as a boulder.

Why? Diana's eyes flew wide.

"Why...?"

"Why, you ask? Is it not only natural for a groom to spend his wedding night with his bride?"

In the golden light, his dark face took on a gilded sheen. His eyes, holding the candleflame, turned toward her face.

Something was off. Was it only the play of shadow? Those eyes seemed to glitter — with a base, gloating delight, or perhaps with pure joy.

"Why — is it that you can't stomach the thought of being stuck with a slave bastard?"

"..."

"Well, what a pity. This is how it will be for you, my lady, from here on out."

A caged bird. A humiliation promised. Diana had to choose. Her body shook and trembled.

"Take it off."

"..."

"This thing on my neck. Take it off."

"..."

Diana's silver-grey eyes met his. She swore she offered no coquetry, no artifice of any kind. At those flat words, Giscard reached out. The Slave Restraint Collar resonated with its master's hand and came unlocked. His large hand touched her neck.

So this is how I walk the road to hell that was always meant for me.

Being sold off to Ferdinand, or this — in truth, were they any different?

Then perhaps... perhaps it would be better to win this man's favor. The moment she had shown the slightest softening, hadn't he removed the collar?

Diana opened her eyes and looked at the man who would become her husband. It was surrender. His large hand brushed her neck once, then fell away.

Her reason was already paralyzed. Diana drifted toward him with a blank face. Reading her nonresistance in her eyes, his hands tore her thin garment with a single rending pull. Gooseflesh rippled over her bared skin. His gaze traveled over her body — a neck as delicate as a fawn's, a swelling chest, legs pressed shyly together despite her efforts to hide herself, a neat row of teeth caught against her lip. Hot desire kindled in eyes that had been cold as ice.

His lips bit into her neck. When she clamped her mouth shut against the pain, a rough hand came down flat upon her bare flesh. For an instant, it felt as though that hand were trembling.

It's nothing. This was something I had to live through sooner or later anyway. Diana Brien. You know perfectly well what becomes of a nobleman's daughter, don't you?

Now, seduce him. Only then will the life ahead of you grow easier.

Lifting her stiffened body, Diana wound her arms around his neck. His lips parted, and his tongue pushed inside.

"Mmph— nn!"

Who had ever said a kiss was sweet? It was violent and rough, heralding the union to come.

That tongue savored every corner of her small mouth. His fingers kept kneading her jutting breasts, hard, until red handprints bloomed across the snow-white skin. It hurt as though her chest were caught in a vise. But Diana, drowning in the pain, did not moan.

Of course — for him, even this union is revenge. That must be why he handles me with such brutal hands. When her nipples peaked at his touch, the man soon took them into his mouth.

Why? The ticklish feeling lasted only a moment before he bit down, and Diana's brow knotted.

"Hhk—! Hhk—!"

When he sank his teeth into both mounds, her body shuddered with pain. Could anything hurt this much, agonize this much? The first union alone had made her head reel, and this man's savagery left her paralyzed with dread.

At last the man began to undress. Diana tried not to look at the male body, but even in that one fleeting glance she could tell it was a threateningly powerful frame. A chest far broader than her own, shoulders spread wide as a beam. She could not bring herself to look lower.

She lay there, looking up at the man gazing down at her. He reached out to toy with Diana's hair, then sniffed at it with little huffs.

"I only ever imagined it."

"..."

"What it would be like to touch your hair properly."

"..."

"What scent it would carry. How soft it would be."

"..."

"It reeks of something vile."

Even as he said it, he stroked her long hair over and over, then pressed his lips to it — the sort of gesture lovers make. When Diana instinctively tried to twist away, he seized a fistful of her hair and shoved her down flat.

Soon his tongue was trailing down along her collarbone. She reached up to pull the shirt hanging precariously from Giscard's shoulders down and off.

He gave a short, sharp sneer.

He said nothing, but his eyes were those of a man watching a slave spread her legs in submission. He abandoned all pretense of trifling caresses.

He simply batted her hand away and spread her legs. His rigid manhood prodded at her entrance. The hard, stone-like pressure against her most delicate flesh made her flinch away before she knew it, but he drove forward with a cruelty bordering on merciless. She shuddered violently at the feel of him piercing into her. Then, in a single instant, he buried himself to the hilt inside her.

Her first experience was pure pain. Having something forced blindly into her body was far too much to bear. He had decided this would be her 'punishment.'

"Ngh— nngh— ah— aah!"

She squeezed her eyes shut and writhed. She wanted to say it hurt, but she knew he would not listen. Instead she bit down hard on her lips. But that, too, lasted only a moment.

"Ah— ahhk!"

Without meaning to, her arms tightened around his neck — and he jerked his hips back with a rough groan. A low sound reached her ears. It seemed he had withdrawn entirely; then he plunged deep again, filling her completely.

Too much. Too much. It is too much.

Tears streaming, Diana looked up at Giscard.

Holding her chin, he licked her tears away, greedy and unashamed.

His hips moved with wild violence. Her arms swung limply with every brutal motion. Against his hand, Diana made the sounds her own mouth could not.

The intermittent crack of skin striking skin beat against her ears. Numb to the pain now, Diana let her lips fall slightly open and thought, coldly: In any case, the wedding night has been consummated. He has bedded me.

"Diana."

"..."

"Diana, Diana. My lady, my lady!"

What was it that had melted into that voice, calling her my lady purely to jeer at her?

Ah. He is a monster.

Diana closed her eyes.

When Diana woke, she bit her lip. A dull, throbbing ache pulsed between her legs. Staring blankly at the sheets stained with blood, she bit her lip again.

She could not make it feel real — any of what she had done.

She touched her smooth neck once more. A neck with no collar on it. Dragged like a dog before the eyes of the whole world into this marriage, she had given her body to this man to have the leash undone.

"Ah... nn..."

So much had happened that Diana had forced herself to refuse the shock of it. But now, understanding anew what she had done, nausea rose in her throat. She had surrendered her virginity — the treasure a noble daughter is made to prize above all else.

And that was not all.

She had mingled flesh with her enemy, bare skin to bare skin.

She had moaned in his arms, under his kisses. Whether from pain or from pleasure, it did not matter.

Disgust at herself — at the reality that awaited her — came boiling up. Diana clapped a hand over her mouth. Her insides twisted and heaved without pause.

"Urk— uuurk!"

Diana vomited right there on the bed. And with it, the sobs she had been swallowing burst free. She was anxious, and she was afraid. But there was no one left in the world to soothe that fear.

She understood, truly, that she was alone now.

And so, for the first time, Diana cast off the noble's mask and became a frail human being, and wept.

Before long, a rustle came from somewhere behind her. Diana turned — and Giscard, seated in a chair, was watching her.

She had believed the space beside her empty, and so she had wept her fill. The instant she saw Giscard, she forgot how to cry and stared at him, her face gone rigid.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Without thinking, she pulled the blanket up over her bare body. Seeing it, Giscard turned his head away. She had wept so long that her sniffles filled the silent room. As though he could not bear to hear another moment of it, he walked out.

It was a bitterly cold wedding night.

A noblewoman of fallen Farnborough had become queen. That alone was mockery enough. Not even royalty of some other land — merely an aristocrat of a conquered nation. And then there had been the wedding. The King, in a fit of perverse taste, had locked a slave's restraint collar around his own bride's neck.

Because of it, everything surrounding Diana was steeped in humiliation. Giscard, apparently determined that she should suffer properly, filled her household with maids who bore her no goodwill — no, who bore her open enmity. Among them were even maids Diana herself had once dismissed. It was, in short, the very pinnacle of torment.

Everyone was her enemy.

Before she could even attempt anything, her every effort collapsed into futility. Giscard had, quite literally, thrown her away there — and then, obliquely, quietly, let her stumble into ruin.

It would almost have been kinder if he had simply laughed in her face.

"Oh my, Your Majesty the Queen."

Lady Saruvia Leubian, who had been made her lady-in-waiting, was a woman with a viper's tongue to match her lovely face. The virtuous princess who sheltered the pitiful queen of a defeated nation — people sang her praises, while Diana was forever the one being pointed at.

If she dressed lavishly, they sneered that she was overstepping herself, squandering the kingdom's treasury. If she dressed plainly, they laughed — well, what else could one expect of a former slave.

Even the sound of her voice, the mere act of opening her mouth, her very breathing, became objects of ridicule. At palace banquets the noblemen fled for fear they might be forced to exchange a single word with her, and the knights avoided her with visible revulsion.

'They say she's the daughter of a conquered nation.'

'Look at the wretched creature.'

'The slave queen.'

Even the court jester sang songs mocking her. Slave queen. Baseborn queen. Queen of a country that no longer existed. Every jeer the court could devise trailed after her like a shadow.

"That's too far. Don't speak so of Her Majesty the Queen."

The Leubian princess always stepped in front of her like this — but Diana knew the truth of it. She was the one fanning the flames of their censure.

Supplying Diana, unaccustomed to Lodbrok dress, with garments that violated court etiquette was routine; she gagged the queen's voice so that she could accomplish nothing in her office, and stepped forward as though she herself were the mistress of the Queen's Palace.

The maids and ladies attended Lady Leubian as if she were the queen, while Diana was ignored as though she did not exist — or mocked outright.

That her husband, Giscard, was no ally to her there went without saying. He had thrown her into hell and was forever off campaigning from one battlefield to the next.

More horrifying still: before marching to war, and again upon his return, he would take her roughly. It was an explosion of vitality, the savagery of a brutal beast. Without warning he would shove Diana down and take her with her clothes still on, or command her with his own mouth to undress. Every time that flesh mingled with hers, she vomited again — and Giscard would leave her there.

Diana never refused his bed. However it came about, the more he held her, the more it counted as his favor.

If there was anything to thank Giscard for, perhaps it was that he never so much as glanced at another woman. Whether she ought to be truly grateful for that, she could not say.

Thus, coldly, Diana thought.

In that hell, she and Giscard — who spent so little time at the palace — could never grow close. She turned her face from him, and he, in turn, kept his distance.

Yet Giscard held to one principle: whenever he was at the palace, they shared at least one meal a day. It was the least thing that made Diana look like a queen.

It was the fourth anniversary of their marriage. Lately her body had grown so weak that sleep came late. She went into the dining room looking thinner than usual, to find a meal of mostly meat laid out. Diana stared at it blankly. No appetite came.

"Our queen, it seems, is as fastidious as ever."

Giscard remarked it from his seat, already waiting. His sharp eyes regarded Diana as though she were a pathetic creature; she did not meet his gaze even once.

"I hear the queen's fussiness has grown quite severe."

"..."

"Lately especially, they say. More demanding than ever."

Before, he had brandished the rumors of her shabby dress to force her into lavish gowns; now, what would he say, wielding her supposedly spoiled palate?

"Eat."

At Giscard's command, Diana listlessly ate the meat he pushed toward her.

The moment she smelled it, nausea surged, but she forced it down and chewed, and chewed. The meat was quite tender, but for her — appetite long dead — chewing was nothing but labor. She looked up at Giscard as if to ask whether that was enough. He was watching her face.

The moment their eyes met—

"Uuurk!"

Diana covered her mouth and retched. Then one of the maids standing behind her cried out.

"Your Majesty! Majesty, are you all right?"

"..."

"You might have held it in just a little longer."

Diana's face clouded with confusion.

"However much looking at His Majesty's face makes you retch, still..."

"..."

It was whispered — but loud enough for Giscard to hear. He rose from his seat at once. And the table they shared ceased to exist forever.

A few days later, he left for the battlefield.

"You are with child."

No one said congratulations. The queen, who had looked like a walking corpse, was rumored to loathe her King.

At the word with child, the ladies-in-waiting busied themselves trading sidelong glances, while the queen herself kept her silence and stared only out the window.

"Her courses have been irregular... how far along would you say?"

The physician peered into Diana's belly through a magic device.

"Roughly twelve weeks, by my estimate."

"I see. You've done well. Everyone, withdraw."

Left alone in the room, Diana stared blankly at the ceiling. Inside her hollowed belly was a child. A child.

It did not feel real.

There is a baby in this small belly? A baby? My baby?

She stroked her belly all day long. Between that monster and me, a child has been made? Diana tried to pinch her stomach. But she could not bring herself to put any force into it.

That a life was inside her felt wondrous, miraculous. But more than anything, it was horrifying!

Clutching her belly, Diana wept. So in the end I'm carrying that bastard's spawn! That's how it is! She gagged and choked on her sobs. She struck her belly with her fist. Struck it, and struck it, and struck it again.

In truth, there was a sure way. Drink an abortifacient — or drive her belly hard against the corner of heavy furniture.

But she could not bring herself to do it. Beating at her belly with her own hands, she wailed herself to sleep.

Diana accepted the cup Lady Leubian offered. It was a tea held to celebrate the queen's pregnancy, attended by noblewomen on friendly terms with the Ducal House of Leubian.

"The physician says this tea is good for the baby."

"..."

When Diana only stared at the tea, Lady Leubian spoke as if wounded.

"What — do you think I have put something in it?"

She drooped her characteristically lovely eyes and pushed out her lips. Looking at that face, bright as gathered sunlight, Diana looked at the teacup.

"That's too much, Your Majesty. What could Her Ladyship possibly have done?"

One of the older noblewomen chided her as though lecturing a child. She could see the others whispering. The knights too, as if on cue, began to revile Diana. Of course — with all these people watching, would the princess truly dare harm her? Even so, refusing was impossible.

Diana drank the tea.

And then—

"Ah— ah! Aaagh!"

She lost the child. Looking down at Diana's screaming form, Lady Leubian smiled a chill, quiet smile.

"Wife!"

The door to Diana's chamber burst open. She watched the man striding toward her. Giscard. His violet eyes wavering, his expression frantic. Diana looked up at him with a bloodless face.

"You've returned quickly."

Giscard had left for the front not long ago. And indeed, he looked nothing like a man who had made a tidy return — he had clearly come straight back. He closed the distance to her step by step.

"Never mind that — the child..."

Seeing the strange excitement written on Giscard's face, Diana realized that no one had told him what had become of the child.

"They told me you were with child. The child..."

"There is none."

"What?"

Giscard's face changed. His eyes went cold. He stared hard into Diana's face. The warmth that had flickered there for the briefest instant vanished.

"There is none."

"..."

"None, I said! I took the medicine."

Diana screamed it. She screamed as though she were uttering something unspeakable. I never even decided — whether I would love this child, or hate it.

"What, did you want to see a child in me? In Farnborough's slave?!"

Diana's mind had already left her.

She had known of its existence barely a day. The foolish mother had carried it for three months without ever knowing it was there.

So am I to rejoice before this monster that it is gone?

To grieve?

A hollow laugh escaped her at the thought.

She tried to tell him what had happened at the tea party. Yes — if Giscard had shown any interest in the child, then surely, surely he would avenge it, at least.

"Your Majesty, that child..."

But Giscard spoke with the expression of a man beholding something monstrous.

"Don't tell me you erased the child yourself?"

After Giscard's blunder, Diana insisted, forcefully, that Lady Leubian had killed the child.

Unexpectedly, Giscard ordered the Leubian princess arrested without much resistance.

Diana, hardly recovered from losing the child, was white as death.

"How could I possibly harm Your Majesty's child — the blood of the royal house — before all these eyes?!"

Lady Leubian cried out, the very picture of astonishment. Diana and Giscard received them in the audience chamber, the truth veiled between them.

"Quite so. Her Ladyship would never do such a thing. To harm the royal blood so openly, before a room full of people!"

The nobles from the tea party cried out. Diana looked at them and said:

"Then who, pray tell, made me drink the abortifacient?"

At Diana's level words, the crowd murmured. Tears welled in Lady Leubian's brilliant blue eyes.

"Not one person at this tea party gave Her Majesty any poison."

"Is that so?"

A voice like seething darkness answered. It was a voice rimed with menace, as though rising from hell itself. Giscard's fury was immense. Diana believed the truth would come to light. But the world was always, always unjust.

"I know Her Majesty despises me."

Lady Leubian continued in a trembling voice.

"But to plot like this — to use His Majesty's child to be rid of me — isn't that going too far? It was Her Majesty who staged all of this."

What she said was precisely the suspicion Giscard himself had voiced.

"Your Majesty. Sir Alsio has apprehended a suspicious man within the royal palace."

"..."

"I had meant to let this matter pass unspoken — but for my own honor's sake, it must be brought to light."

At Lady Leubian's gesture, the arrested man was brought forward and made to kneel. Diana had never seen him before in her life. And yet the man spoke as though he knew her. Staring up at Diana, he cried out as if wronged.

"Your Majesty — why on earth would I... d-did you not promise to spare my life?"

"Who are—"

Cutting Diana off, Lady Leubian said:

"This man sold Her Majesty the abortifacient."

"..."

Diana lifted her head and looked at Lady Leubian. The eyes upon her had changed. Giscard's escort knights, his aides, his attendants, the nobles of the tea party — all of them now gazed at Diana, the mother who had killed her own child, with loathing in their faces.

"No. I never — I never did any such thing."

Diana shook her head desperately.

"I truly never..."

She looked at Giscard, her voice shaking. Giscard watched her with his usual cold expression. For the first time, Diana lowered her head to him.

"Believe me. I truly — I would never do such a..."

All of this was Lady Leubian's doing. She remembers that woman's face, that arrogant smile. How she forced the poison to my lips with her own hands.

But that truth had already been doctored beyond reach. Watching Diana's desperate face, a strange emotion settled over Giscard's. At a glance, it almost looked like pleasure.

"...Giscard."

When Diana called his name, Giscard said, looking straight ahead:

"She would hardly mutilate her own body. And what mother kills her own child with her own hands?"

Is he believing me? Is he? Is he, after all, recognizing my truth? But Lady Leubian pressed hard.

"No — it's a lie! There is undeniable evidence."

"Evidence?"

"Your Majesty, why do you hide everything? Did you not wound that noble royal body with your own hands?"

Wounds? Diana's face filled with confusion.

"Did Your Majesty not wish to... erase the child? I know of the bruises upon your belly."

Diana's pallid face went whiter still. Yes — from the moment she learned she carried the child, she had abused her belly like a madwoman.

"The bruises were so horrific that even I, her own lady-in-waiting, came to hear of them."

"..."

"His Majesty need only confirm it himself."

Giscard looked at Diana's face. This time she could not bring herself to say no. Could not bring herself to lie...

But from that expression alone, Giscard seemed to reach his verdict. The corner of his mouth curling upward, he said:

"There seems little need to confirm anything."

"..."

"Let this matter be buried."

Giscard rose from his seat, speaking coldly. His face was placid, but a suffocating, razor-edged pressure bore down upon them all. With a soft, curling smile, Giscard took Diana's hand. Why did that burning hand raise gooseflesh? Led by Giscard's hand, she took one leaden step after another.

Cold hand met burning hand. Giscard looked at Diana, curled his lips upward — and raised his sword. Don't tell me — is he going to kill me? Is he finally granting me death? Diana flinched and shut her eyes.

"Aaagh!"

But it was a man's strangled cry that made her jolt — the man who had supposedly sold the abortifacient.

"For another man to dare come and go from the Queen's chambers — that is not to be borne."

Giscard murmured it, the words half a riddle. Diana trembled violently — and looked back.

She had fallen into a flawless trap. Giscard had not believed her. She saw Lady Leubian's curling lips, and the nobles trailing in her wake.

All of them — everyone in this place is a monster.

She came to hate this place with her whole heart. Tears rolled from her closed eyes.

Giscard came to her room and shoved Diana up against the wall. He looked at her. Diana spoke to the man who was barely containing a colossal rage.

"I didn't."

"You didn't?"

"I didn't."

"Didn't what?"

"I didn't kill it."

"But you tried to. You wanted it dead."

"..."

"My lady is nothing if not honest."

As if she were something endearing, Giscard swept Diana's hair back from her face with his hand — then seized it, hard. Her lips clamped shut against the pain.

"What, carrying the spawn of a monster in your belly made you sick all over again?"

"..."

"Of course. That must be it. That's why you erased the child. Your heartlessness, your cruelty — I understand them all."

"..."

Giscard had gone completely mad. He stroked the belly that had held the child like a lunatic as he spoke. Then, unable to contain himself, he drove his fist into the wall.

"Do you know how long I waited for that child! Only then would you—! You senseless girl! Still clinging to that petty little pride of yours, aren't you?!"

"It wasn't me..."

"Even if it wasn't you — you failed to protect it! You couldn't even protect one child!"

At Giscard's words, Diana laughed in sheer disbelief. She had never been given the strength to protect anything. He had left her chained like a dog, handed her no power at all — and now he asked why she had not protected it.

"Did I ever say I wanted it?"

At that, Giscard's mouth clamped shut. He had never once treated her as a proper wife — what right did this scoundrel have to rage over one lost child?

"Were you planning to bear my spawn?"

"..."

"Did I ever once call your revenge unjust? I accepted it, always — always!"

"..."

"And now a child? A child? Did you want to play house with me? Wasn't it just one more way to make me suffer?"

"..."

"What, you're the one who enjoys my suffering! That's what you are! Yes — it was horrifying. Utterly horrifying! The thought of your child inside me was too horrifying to bear!"

Diana screamed. It no longer mattered whether he believed her! She almost wished he wouldn't. Whether she had taken the medicine or not, hadn't Giscard already resolved to condemn her regardless!

"I hate it, I hate it, I hate it so much!"

Seeing his face flicker, just slightly, with something like shock, Diana wanted to grind that face under her heel. The hand gripping her hair slowly went slack.

"A life with you is horrifying! This life is horrifying! Just kill me! Please, kill me!"

"..."

"I'm begging you to kill me! Please — please, I can't, I can't anymore!"

She screamed as though mad. She could never loosen the cord of tension, always braced for the next blow. Those taut nerves shrieked without cease and gnawed at her mind, and even as Diana believed the revenge of the man who had made this situation just, she could not help but hate him.

"Please — kill me!"

Diana wailed. She shoved roughly at Giscard's chest. Die — better to die. If it has come to this, there is no reason left to live.

"Alexa, was it?"

"..."

Diana's head snapped up. Her younger sister, whom she had sent away to safety when war broke out. She had heard no news of her — but she had believed her safe and well.

Looking up at Giscard looming over her, Diana said:

"For her sake, if nothing else, I cannot be allowed to die."

"...Don't tell me. Is that a threat?"

"It is."

Giscard affirmed it, his voice almost gentle. In that instant, past all restraint, Diana swung her hand. Unexpectedly, he let her strike his cheek with ease.

"You revolting monster."

Diana said through gritted teeth. A monster. This man is truly a monster. This man — this bastard — is a monster. We should never have met. We should never have found each other again.

"As if a mother who killed her own child were any better."

He had been driven mad by revenge — and she, made the instrument of that revenge, had already gone mad as well.