The Poison Princess (43 page)

The princess finished her catalogue of moral
misdeeds and returned to her proper sense. When she finished, salty
hot tears covered her face, while poison and vomit were in a pool
of filth around her, but for the first time in over a decade, she
felt clean. Though she felt horribly guilty, the weight of such
actions was lifted from her shoulders, after the cleansing had
forced her to relive every dark action she had taken in the past
decade. She looked up at her demon and smiled, her teeth no longer
covered in the dark purple poison.

“Ruby?” Scarlett asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Are you okay?”

The princess nodded. “I’ve never been
better.”

Ruby could barely carry the war
hammer now that she was no longer the poison princess. The sands
had cured her of her darkness, but they had also rid her of the
strength that came with it. She worried about her chances in taking
down the craggy hand demon without it. She wondered if the poison
was still there, inside her, deep down. Whether it was or not, it
seemed beyond her grasp now.

The horned demon walked beside her human
master down the hallway. She held the snaith of her scythe in one
hand and left the other unoccupied. The bracelets that could
separate a demon from their human were still stored in her pocket
of space, and the princess would be relying on Scarlett to get them
out and onto the craggy hand demon’s wrists. She wasn’t sure of
their chances now that Ruby was no longer poisoned, but her
connection to her princess meant that she had little choice in
following her. She was ashamed to consider putting the bracelets on
herself and becoming an untethered demon like the assassin, Astrid,
but she ultimately decided that she couldn’t do that to Ruby.
Regardless of her interest in self-preservation, Scarlett still had
a certain affection for her human master, and she was going to
stand beside her through whatever happened and suffer the
consequences no matter what.

Ruby and Scarlett walked side by side toward
the throne room. There were no guards posted along the way and no
servants or attendants roaming the halls. The craggy hand demon
knew they were coming, and the princess recognized this fact. He
was simply allowing them to come to him, because he thought there
was nothing to fear. Ruby sought to prove him wrong.

The princess led her horned demon through the
halls, until they arrived at the entrance to the throne room. The
golden, arching double doors were closed, but Ruby didn’t pause for
even a moment. She pushed the doors, swinging them both open and
causing them to crash against the walls inside the throne room,
their noise echoing throughout the pillared chamber.

Seated in the king and queen’s thrones were
the craggy hand demon and Ruby’s sister. They didn’t seem in the
least surprised to see the pair of women, confirming her suspicion
that he had known they were there. Leina looked much the same as
she did when they shared their dream. Her face was pale, with the
corruption clearly having taken over. The demon, too, had not
changed since she last saw him. The cream-white mask was still
strapped over his face, and he wore a long black robe with a hood.
The red rocky flesh of his craggy hand crept out of the sleeves of
the black fabric, making his reality as a demon immediately
apparent.

The princess strode forward with Scarlett
following a bit behind. The masked demon on the throne stood as
Ruby approached, causing them to both stop several feet away. Leina
stood as well, wearing an overstretched smile across her pale
face.

“My dear sister,” the queen began. “Whatever
foolish thought has driven you here? The army we sent to collect
your head in the Cloister and the assassin that assured me she
would find you weren’t enough? You thought you should just press
your luck and show up at my home?”

Ruby gulped and forced herself to look into
her sister’s eyes. “I’m here to save you, Leina.”

The corrupted queen cocked her head to the
side, still wearing the insidious smile, and she examined Ruby’s
face. “I thought I told you… you can’t save me.” She raised her
hands out to the side and up in the air. “This is who I am. I like
it.”

“I’m going to kill this vile thing,” Ruby
said, pointing at the craggy demon. “I’m going to save you.”

At that, the demon laughed. His frame shook,
as the maddening laughter echoed throughout the large, empty
chamber. Eventually, he stopped himself and spoke. “Our bond is
complete. You cannot harm me without also harming your dear
sister.”

Ruby turned and nodded to Scarlett. Looking
back to the craggy hand demon, she glowered and said, “That’s where
you’re wrong… Tyran.”

At the simple announcement of that word, the
demon fell to his knees. His white mask fell off, and Scarlett
retrieved the bracelets from the absence of space and placed the
scythe back inside it. The princess rushed forward, dropping her
war hammer, grabbing her sister, and tearing her away from the
craggy hand demon.

Squirming, Leina shouted, “Unhand me!”

Ruby grit her teeth and fought back, holding
her tightly in her arms. “This is for your own good, Leina!”

Scarlett kneeled down to place the bracelets
over the craggy hand demon’s wrists. Still reeling from hearing his
own true name uttered, he couldn’t fight back. She slipped the
first bracelet over his normal, fleshy hand, and as soon as she
did, Leina’s struggles against Ruby came nearly to an end. As the
second bracelet was placed over the demon’s craggy wrist, Leina
seemed to snap back to reality, cleansed of the foul taint.

“What’s… going on?” she asked no one in
particular, looking about the room in a state of panicked
confusion.

The princess let her sister go, and she
nearly fell to the floor. She caught herself and stumbled forward a
few feet.

“Ruby?” She glanced around, her expression
telling the princess that she didn’t know what was going on or
where she was, but she couldn’t find the words to ask any
questions.

Scarlett, meanwhile, stood up, while the
weakened craggy hand demon lay on the floor, reeling from the use
of his true name.

The princess kneeled beside her sister. “What
do you remember, Leina?”

Shaking her head and staring into the
distance, Leina replied, “I don’t want to remember.” Leina
continued to shake her head, even more fiercely now. She recalled
pieces of her memory but refused to believe them. “No! That was a
dream! That didn’t happen!”

“Leina.” Ruby reached out and touched her
sister’s shoulder, but she flung it off.

“That can’t have been real.”

“I’m… sorry…”

Her sister backed up, continuing to shake her
head. Her breaths were heavy and prolonged. She clutched at her
stomach before falling back to the ground and retching up all over
the stone tiles of the throne room.

“Leina, my little flower…” the craggy hand
demon whispered to her from all the way across the room.

Both Ruby and her sister turned to face the
demon. It was the first time she had ever seen the dark creature
without his mask on. She had wondered what was under that
cream-white disguise ever since she’d seen him eleven years prior.
She’d expected that he was disfigured in some way or was just
terrible to gaze upon. The truth, however, was much different. He
looked completely normal. If Ruby hadn’t known that he was a demon,
she would have thought his face to belong to a mortal man.

“Help me, my little flower,” the craggy hand
demon said in a strangely soothing voice.

“Shut him up!” the princess shouted to
Scarlett.

The horned demon nodded and kicked her
prisoner across the face, blooding his lips and nose.

“Ignore him,” Ruby said, turning back to her
sister.

Leina stared into his eyes. “I… I need him.
He needs me.”

The princess moved between her sister and the
craggy hand demon, blocking their line of sight to one another.
“He’s in your past. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

A pale color washed over Leina’s face, and
blackness grew in her eyes despite Ruby’s interruption of their
connected vision. The princess studied her sister’s face, not
seeing her reach for the dagger strapped to her leg, under the
folds of her dress.

Leina leaned to the side and nodded toward
the craggy hand demon. “You’re going to kill him?”

“Yes.”

“Then, you should kill me as well. I brought
him into this world.”

“I’m not going to kill you, Leina.”

“Good. Then that makes this easier.”

The dark queen pulled the dagger out of its
sheath and plunged it into Ruby’s gut. Both the princess and
Scarlett felt the pain of the blade, as it tore through Ruby’s
flesh and spilled her blood out to the stone tiles of the castle
throne room.

“Leina… No…” the princess uttered.

Leina smiled, pulled the blade out, and
jabbed it back in once more. “Does it hurt?”

“What… are you… doing?” Ruby asked, still
thinking there was something good and decent inside her sister.

“He’s all I have. You’re not taking him away
from me!”

The queen yanked the blade once more and
tried to shove it back inside Ruby, but the princess’ hands blocked
the way. The dagger’s sharp edges sliced into her fingers, but it
hadn’t been pushed with enough force to cut through the bone, just
painfully up to it. Ruby cried out in agony, and her sister
laughed, allowing her the minor victory of stopping the attack.
While the princess struggled with her sliced fingers and hand,
Leina released her grip on the knife, letting Ruby grab the blade
with her wounded hand. Ignoring the weapon, she simply sunk a
finger into the injuries in her sister’s gut. Ruby dropped the
knife and tumbled to the floor.

“How about that?” Leina asked, nearly
smiling.

Across the room, Scarlett writhed on the
ground, while the craggy hand demon was finally able to stand
despite being weakened by his true name. His strength, Scarlett
realized, must have been terrible. He moved away from the horned
demon and toward Leina and Ruby. The dark queen saw this, removed
her fingers from the princess’ wounds, and stood to join him,
ignoring her sister bleeding on the ground. Leina walked to her
craggy hand demon somewhere between the two women and pulled the
bracelets off his wrists. With that, his magic power was fully
restored. Even Ruby, without any sorcerous knowledge to speak of,
could feel a terrible energy radiate through the room.

His face exposed, the princess looked over
and saw the smile stretched across it. He raised his craggy hand
and then brought it down, pressing it flat against the air. Both
Ruby and Scarlett were pushed into the ground by his unseen force.
The craggy hand demon retrieved the bracelets from Leina and
returned to Scarlett. He put a boot under her body and flipped her
over onto her back. The horned demon tried to conjure some magical
attack against him, but he was too powerful. He was blocking her
energy from coming together in any meaningful way. Kneeling down,
the craggy hand demon slipped the first bracelet over her wrist,
and then he slid the second onto her other arm with no delay. The
horned demon’s connection to Ruby was severed, and neither could
feel the other. The princess still squirmed from the painful but
not lethal stab wounds, while Scarlett was finally free of that
experience. She was, however, bound by the bracelets and therefore
quite weak and incapable of using magic.

The craggy hand demon then stood and reached
into the unseen depths, just as Scarlett often did, and he
retrieved a curved dagger. Looking to Leina, he asked, “Would you
care to do the honors, my little flower?”

The dark queen smiled her wide grin, grabbing
the dagger from her demon. “You don’t want to play with her
first?”

“Your sister will suit my needs. This one
will only get in the way.”

Leina looked down at Scarlett. “My sister’s
whore of a demon. I’m glad we finally have this chance to meet face
to face. It’s important to know the company your family members
keep. I need to know whether you’re taking good care of her. Are
you keeping her satisfied?”

The dark queen looked back to Ruby and the
increasing pool of blood she was laying in. Leina’s smile widened,
and she looked utterly mad standing above the horned demon. Ruby
may have thought she could be saved, but Scarlett simply didn’t see
it. She was vile even to her demonic eyes. The corruption that the
craggy hand demon had sewn into her was far worse than anything she
had ever thought possible. It was true that Scarlett liked the
darker side of life, but this little creature had gone too far.
Scarlett merely wanted a bit of fun, freedom, and pleasure. Leina,
on the other hand, was sadistic and monstrous, getting pleasure
from terrible acts.

The queen finally answered her own question.
“She does look quite content. I worry she’s not treating
you
properly though.” She gripped the little dagger and showed it
plainly to Scarlett. “Has she ever fucked you with one of these?
No? Well, I think I can fix that for you.”

The horned demon gritted her teeth, knowing
what was coming, but she was still unable to move with the craggy
hand demon returned to power. Leina dropped to her knees and slid
the curved blade into Scarlett’s body. She pulled it out, still
wearing the maniacal smile, and shoved it back in. Scarlett wailed
in pain, while Ruby was forced to watch her demon slowly and
painfully killed right before her. The princess struggled to stand,
to defy the magical power that held her to the floor, to fight past
the burning hot pain in her gut, but she could do nothing. Blood
sprayed out of the horned demon’s body in spurting streams, as
Leina began to slash instead of stab. Scarlett’s cries soon ceased,
as her life slipped away.