the french had been deemed enemies.
he slept with the enemy. he laughed with the enemy. he drank tea and ate with the enemy. he adored the enemy. he had to kill the enemy.
it had been at the urging of his cousin that he rid them all of the frenchwoman, lest she be a spy or become one had that not already been her motive. he dared not argue with them, perhaps that would have been taken as a sign he had abandoned his beloved empire and gone to the enemy's side. now he had to choose between two loves-- the empire or family. a hard decision it had been, and even now he seemed to regret it as he mashed up the root of a wolfsbane plant he had bought from an old senile chinese healer on the silk road. a highly toxic plant, he'd been informed, and asked what he was to use it for.
none of the old man's business, he thought as he sifted the root mash from the liquid it'd created into a cup of mer's tea, repeating the process two more times until it significantly increased the level of tea in her cup. the lethality increased the more she would ingest, and it was not that he wanted to kill her for sure, but he did not want her to suffer through the hours it'd take should he have stopped after the first dose.
the first sip was horrifying. in a way, he'd been expecting her to drop dead immediately, but she did not. only smiled over the brim of her cup and sipped some more.
"different," he heard her mumble.
"different," sükhbaatar confirmed. "you like?"
she nodded. he shuddered.
an hour later, after complaining of her mouth being dry and numb but not very concerned perhaps it's only a cold coming on, her breathing became rapid and heavy and he knew it was time. he dropped the book he'd been reading and, without any explanation to her, forced her against her panicked rushing to get space into his arms. he held her, coddled her against his chest until she accepted his hold, but that must have been something to do less with her trying to breathe and her trying to live. she was shaking and trembling, tense as he was, his eyes shut tightly and his heart beating faster and faster whilst hers slowed with her shaking.
"to take is not to keep, and you were never mine to keep," he mumbled into her hair when the last of her twitches and pitiful mewls between gasps subsided. his beautiful golden angel faded into grey.
