The Princess and The Pirate
Chapter 47

Magnus kept his face buried in the top of the Princess’s knotted hair. She was safe for the moment but peace was never permanent. War taught him that much.

A violently cold wind rolled over the empty cemetery, reminding him of his exposed position. The door to the mausoleum was wide open and everything looked defiled. Always analyzing, he could see his own intrusive fingerprints on everything. His touch was everywhere. They needed to leave.

It needed to look like grave robbers. It needed to look like anyone but him was there.

He straightened his posture and Jacqueline’s head lifted, feeling his body language change. Her eyes were bloodshot, puffy from tears and exhaustion. Her eyelids felt as if they were weighed down as she tried to look up at him. The Princess vaguely recalled Magnus’s distorted face. It had been nearly ten years since he showed himself at court but now he was all she had left.

The hinges of the mighty stone door creaked, scattering her thoughts of parties and luxurious times.

Icy reality bit at her cheeks. Behind her were the cold, dead bodies of her parents. Courageously, but still trembling, Jacqueline slowly tilted her dirty face backward, trying to catch a glance inside. Maybe the moonlight would reveal something different?

Magnus grabbed the Princess’s fair chin softly, stopping her. What was the point of looking? “I need to get you inside. In the morning we can make a run for the Emperor. We need to escape your cousin,” he said with all the conviction a starving man could muster while trying to instill confidence in the girl.

It was only a distraction. He didn’t want her fixated on the tomb’s contents. If she slipped into hysterics they both were dead.

Jacqueline sniffled, still shaking in the cold. Accepting his control, she averted her eyes to the ground, mindlessly observing the dead wreaths and offerings instead. Everything was dead here. “Have you seen Kyle?” It was a blunt, lifeless statement.

She was not as naïve as the general had assumed. She played his game, accepting the intentional distraction. Regardless, she still expected Kyle to be dead based on how horribly the night was going. Could Lillian really kill him? Was she capable of that? A crippling loneliness bit at her toes, seeped through her skin, and floated in her blood stream. It stabbed her insides. It cut, poked, and prodded her relentlessly.

Magnus didn’t have an answer for her. Hell, he didn’t even know who Kyle was. “Who, Princess?”

“I just love him, that’s all.” There. She said it. Not to the person to whom it mattered, but she said it.

Jacqueline inhaled deeply, simply too broken to talk anymore. The story was too long and she had no heart left to tell it. With glossy eyes, Jacqueline fixed her stare into a wilted violet on the steps. The loneliness invaded her lungs, filling them. The sharp bits punctured the soft, vulnerable tissue. Deflated, utterly devastated, she sighed. Could Lillian take him away from her?

The stench of death felt suffocating. Every punishing word she had said was set in stone. There was no way to fix it. Her parents were dead, now and forever, lying in their beds of disappointment. Her shoulders felt heavy. All her vindictive misdeeds suddenly weighed down upon her, causing her weary frame to slouch.

All her senseless cruelty was permanent. Why hadn’t she just done the things they asked? Why was defiance so important? She should have just handled the grain situation… Oh God, all her cruelty was permanent, and that was how her parents would remember her!

Forever and ever.

It was too much to bear. Jacqueline bit her lip and shut her eyes tightly, trying to suppress a violent bawl. It was all ruined.

“Shh, shh, stop.” Magnus grabbed Jacqueline’s shoulders, recognizing that splintering look. Soldiers cracked under the pressures of war. Bloodshed and a lifetime of regret was no place for a royal girl. “There will be a time for grieving but it can’t be now.” Although it killed him to deny her anything, the last remaining heir of Rocqueburne was at war. She needed to remember that if they were to stand any chance. “We need to get away from your cousin,” he reiterated.

“I feel numb,” was all Jacqueline could say.

“Nonsense. It’s just the cold,” Magnus rebutted. He stared at his reflection in her eyes while trying to keep the Princess focused. He wrapped his arms around her but bending his back caused him a sudden, horrifying discomfort. In stubborn defiance of the pain, Magnus secured her in his arms.

There was an immediate, blinding, screaming protest from his spine. The pain was so incredible he nearly dropped her, unable to stand straight. Slowly, the general looked at the mausoleum door. Had it broken him? Magnus heard his wife’s phantom echoing “You can’t solve everything with brute strength, Magnus.” He winced and scorned the nothingness.

He couldn’t carry the girl to safety. His strength was leaving him.

“You’re hurt,” Jacqueline whispered, using his ill health to distract her from the bottomless misery. “Why didn’t you say anything?” Here she had been sobbing all over the man, gracelessly, and he could barely lift himself to his feet.

“Pride doesn’t wane with age, Princess.” He cracked a light, pained smile. The discomfort subsided only slightly as he leaned forward.

Jacqueline stood up slowly and helped Magnus stand more confidently, like the old, broken man he now was. His face twisted in a grimace, not completely agreeing with his newfound condition. She kept her hand against his clothed chest and gently guided the general down the mausoleum steps while crushing the splinters of glass further into her soles.

The Princess pushed her shoulder into Magnus’s armpit to help keep him up. “Are things bad?” she inquired quietly.

Magnus snorted, trying to stand as straight as his wound would allow. It was his nature neither to rely on others nor to seek assistance. He looked more like a crippled hermit than a golden general. “The worst. But discovering you alive assures these days are numbered!” An idea popped into Magnus’s head. Perhaps he could still be useful.

Eying his many layers of wraith cloaks, Magnus swept Jacqueline tightly beside him, hunched forward, and then engulfed the two of them in blankets. His massive black wings covered everything except his eyes. The ensemble’s train dragged behind them, completely hiding the Princess within.

“If you stay low and we walk together, I should be able to get you inside the castle,” Magnus said aloud, his voice quieted by the many layers over his head.

Jacqueline pressed against his chest. Her hair, stringy and oily, stained the general’s undershirt. She kept one hand against his ribs, the other wrapped around his back, feeling the shaking strain in his legs. This was a labor, a burden, she was making him carry.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Quiet, girl.”

The pair slowly crept back up to the lonely door buried in the castle’s side. It was a spot hidden in darkness as the setting moon was obscured by the tall Rocqueburne spires.

Just as the general’s hand reached out to the old salted wood, the door itself pulled back. A soldier stood there, seeming just as shocked that anyone was on the other side, especially an emaciated phantom. The flames from the hallway’s torches leaned toward the open door, the cold air pulling at the heat.

He hiccupped, still feeling the warmth of drunkenness in his face, and quickly adjusted his sloppily attached cape. Considering the old man was supposed to be on strict bed rest, the soldier looked flustered. “Sir! Y-you should be upstairs! R-recuperating!”

“Edwards.” Magnus only gave a hard stare, keeping the Princess pinned tightly to his body. Foregoing the indignant repulsion he felt for his regiment’s lack of dignity or even self-respect, he simply wanted inside, not a fight. Saying nothing, for fear of what he truly wanted to say, Magnus lurched past him in a slow, hunchbacked way.

The soldier moved to the side clumsily, letting his superior in. Edwards gazed out into the starry night, just trying to avoid the look of fatherly disappointment. As the general slowly dragged himself into the hallway, the soldier noticed red streaks on the floor.

Blood?

Had Magnus killed an animal? The edges of the blankets were painting long, red stripes against the castle tile. Was he hurt? Had the old man managed to injure himself?

“Sir?” Edwards began while watching the nearly dead hunchback, “Are you bleeding?”

Magnus didn’t stop walking. Jacqueline felt his hold tighten and she tightened hers as well. Her bleeding footprints where smeared by the hems of the general’s blankets. “No son, leave it alone,” he said to the young man, not looking back.

It was already peculiar for Magnus to be up, let alone slinking about considering he had been indisposed for days. He had been sequestered because of his lunatic shouting about an evil queen, poisons, and murders. With the sudden bombardment of fevers, chills, and sweats, had he actually snapped? What if he was dragging a dead body around? “Sir, if you would…” Edwards began more firmly, suppressing a hiccup. Something wasn’t right. He put his gloved hand on the hilt of his sword. Liquor wasn’t called “liquid courage” for nothing.

“Robin,” Magnus said, stopping his drudge. A peaceable agreement seemed out of the question now. He loosened his hold on Jacqueline. “You’d brandish a weapon at your commander? Drunk?” He knew what Edwards was doing. A soldier wasn’t paid for his level of thoughtfulness.

“Some say you’ve gone mad. You’ve lost your mind.” Edwards quipped. “Too many wars. Too many cold, lonely nights.”

Magnus silently acknowledged that perhaps half of what Edwards was saying was true. He turned around, his blankets and cloaks billowing at the motion. His hulking, hunched shadow leered down at the lowly grunt. It covered the floors and it crept up the walls, nearly swallowing the entire hallway with his gargoyle-like presence.

“You are a man of war,” the general started, scorning the inexperienced recruit while pushing Jacqueline further into the layered blankets to keep her hidden. “What do the rumors of loose harlots and weak mead mean to the likes of you? Maybe that’s all that matters to you now!”

Edwards snorted at the insult. Who was this ancient, dying old man?! The sun had set on his tenure and now he was merely spiteful at the future! “Careful. I may send you back to hell where you belong.”

“A pup like you doesn’t deserve the honor. Your sword is still made out of wood, right? Who would trust a child with a real weapon?” Given their circumstances, now seemed like a very, very inopportune time for a squabble. Jacqueline felt the general grab her wrist tightly.

A pup? A child?! Edwards hiccupped, seeing red. Sweet liquor was whispering such encouraging things in the brash young man’s mind. “I will show you the very real metal of my sword, old man!” He pulled the entire weapon from its sheath but its shine was hidden by Magnus’s shadow.

Jacqueline buried a whine into his ribcage, standing in a lukewarm pool of her own blood, crushing the glass deeper into her tender flesh. Magnus only held her wrist tighter. He was waiting for something.

“Is this training, Robin? Do you need a prompt to start? Or should I send your whore to fight for you?” Magnus antagonized him. Young men were quite easy to provoke. “God knows that’s the only thing you’re capable of stabbing.”

Edwards couldn’t attack the general fast enough!

He threw himself forward, sword first, putting all his drunken energy in front of him. It was all Magnus needed. Stepping to the side of the lunge, he threw back the blankets. Spinning Jacqueline out of harm’s way, but still holding her wrist, it looked as if the two were engaged in a macabre tango.

Edwards hesitated, dumbfounded, at the appearance of another body. He was harboring a young girl in his cloaks? His thoughts ended abruptly as Magnus threw a deceivingly powerful right hook, cracking the soldier right in the face. The boy folded and squeaked pitifully before losing consciousness.

Magnus leaned back against the cold stone wall. His back screamed in agony from the action of leaning, punching, and spinning. He relaxed his hold on the Princess and shut his eyes, praying for the pain to pass quickly.

Jacqueline looked around the hall. They were in the southern side of the castle, but it felt so cold and foreign to her. The familiarity and comfort was gone. Her home wasn’t safe. Nothing was safe. She wished Kyle were here.

The general looked her over and sweat curled down his face, his fever returning. He motioned to his defeated adversary’s sword. Jacqueline scurried to pick it up, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in her wake.

“Let’s keep moving, Princess. My quarters aren’t far,” and he took the sword from her.