The Princess and The Pirate
Chapter 40

“Sofia, help me.”

Sir Magnus recalled his sweet wife’s face between bursts of pain. Her soft, tan skin, curly brunette hair, and hazel eyes stared back at him from the blackness of reality. He had saved her from some southern village ruined by constant skirmishes. Sofia was his exotic beauty. Sofia was his everything and he had found her in the most death-polluted place.

She was cold in the ground now but Magnus prayed to her as though she were a goddess.

“Sofia, help me.”

A forlorn, forgotten figure loomed in a darkened window of Rocqueburne’s castle. The sad, hunched silhouette stared with a hardened expression down at the outside world. The great general of the empire’s army groaned in the shadows, alone. He knew no peace. He was agonized in his body and soul. Uneaten food was scattered about his black room, smelling up the place. Poisoned. He was poisoned and it was identical to the tea party incident, Magnus was sure of it. Half-crazed from hunger or disease, he stared at his reflection out the narrow window slit.

“But I am blood!” the queen had protested. “Blood, like how a dog is to a wolf,” Magnus unkindly replied. “We will not stay, as we have other battles to fight. And this one is lost.”

He had rejected the queen’s request and now he’d wither away here as punishment. Yet, they all thought he was mad! “Poor resilience due to prolonged travel,” they called it. Doctors, what did they know…

He knew a traitorous poisoning when he saw it!

Magnus’s once illustrious men were standing in the courtyard unapologetically enjoying Queen Lillian’s hospitality: loose women, free booze, fatty foods and a sinful distraction from their normally diligent soldier ways. It was a false Valhalla, bought with their dignity.

Maybe he had kept them on the road too long. Maybe their weakened resolve was his fault. The general felt another wave of nausea hit him. Tightening the blanket around him, feeling hot then cold, shaking and sweating, Magnus huffed, dryly swallowing his discomfort.

Forgive them, they are but boys in men’s clothing.

Turning away from the sad scene, the general violently kicked away a full and rotting dinner tray. He would eat no more of the queen’s food! He’d drink no more of her water! All of it was tainted! All of it! He had been quarantined to this tower, having seemed like a stark-raving madman with his accusations. Rocqueburne had endorsed a psychopath onto its throne! A poisonous pit viper in a girl’s fair skin!

It was all on deaf ears! Ears beguiled with tavern songs and maidens’ laughter!

Betrayals ran cheaply through his ranks. The colonel below him had decided to suffer Lillian’s hospitality with a girl on his knee and ale in his hand until his general was better for travel. “The eastern theater can wait, my friend. Your health is of the utmost importance!” he said. Magnus had spit on the man before being carted away.

Now thinking about it, he spit again!

Why hadn’t the Emperor written back to his handfuls of letters?! Lillian must have intercepted them! Feeling rather insane, Magnus slumped down onto his bed as the room spun violently. She was but a girl. The men ate the food, but none of them were sickly. What if it really was the road that made him so ill? As his men’s laughter caught Magnus’s attention, he thought that perhaps, just perhaps, sinning made one immune to the evils of the devil.