Hello I'd like an order of agony, please. ‘ wake up! wake up! ’ for the Power Couple, or ‘ i don’t feel sorry for you. ’ for corrupted Amos AU Cassmos :')
Corrupted Amos AU. WARNING: BAD FEELINGS. BAD PEOPLE DOING BAD THINGS. BAD FEELINGS. BAD IMPLICATIONS. (difficult) Pregnancy mentions. THIS IS NO GOOD, VERY BAD, NOT FUN.
They didn’t need words. Hyal could take one look at him and hear his thoughts in her head as if they were her own. He’d seen the cage in the underground levels. He knew the how of the understanding and had known the truth of it between them since they met.
But after so many years of enforced silence, he would use the power words held whenever he could.
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Amos said.
He’d seen her fall to her knees in the hall. She was in pain’s grasp before she left her bedroom, but the arrogant magister had thought she was above it. With one arm clutching her abdomen, she’d clawed at the wall with the other, magic digging her nails in deep, but not enough to keep her on her feet. The pain choked and gagged her.
“You brought this on yourself.” Amos walked past her. He was hungry. No person would make him stay hungry a moment longer than he decided he would be.
She knew better than to watch him walk away.
At least the brat was silent. Astraea was her name. Hyal had forced the red hair on her, but he’d expected as much. It didn’t matter, in the long run. Astra wouldn’t be the runt her mother was. She would be his power and ambition personified. For now, she laid silently in her cradle, watching everything.
Hyal thought she could keep him away from what was his, but it was just another foolish idea in her head. Like that she could dictate what beds he slept in. Like he cared about her disapproval.
No.
Hyal might still yet die from having birthed the girl. She didn’t have the strength to keep him away from his child.
The letter was sealed with magic. Amos had to feed it a drop of his blood for the seal to release the contents. He frowned at the contents. It was angry and full of splotches, cross-outs and smears. He shoved it in front of Hyal’s face.
She pulled her hands back and refused to look at it.
Amos grabbed for her hair to force her, but her magic stopped him. So she wasn’t dying anymore, then.
“Do not think to touch me,” she said.
“Read it.”
She gave in. She always did. She was weak. “You have a son.”
Amos scoffed and threw the letter in Hyal’s fireplace. What a stupid thing. It never warmed him. “She’s lying.”
“Only one eye turned brown.”
“I don’t care.”
Astraea was surely a mage. He’d acquired two identical toys. One enchanted, one not. She refused the cheap one. She could feel the Fade in the proper one. The one she deserved. Good. No one would dare give her anything less than she deserved.
Hyal entered the nursery. She no longer bothered attempting to keep him out. Her head was unbowed, but it needn’t be. She had learned her place. “I have been invited to your son’s birthday party. I will attend. I care not what you do.”
She was lying. She cared. She cared a lot. She didn’t want him there. Didn’t want him to change his mind and switch to a better heir. Didn’t want him to see her face the shame of everyone knowing ‘her’ lover had betrayed her.
He had no interest in the boy, in the party, but it was best that Hyal not forget who she was.
The attempted assassination of the boy hadn’t surprised Amos.
Hyal saving him and subsequently claiming the child as her ward hadn’t, either. She would scrabble at any chance to get power over him.
She touched the boy’s face. His cheeks, his nose. Some kind of magical conditioning technique.
“I won’t allow you to use him against me, Magister.”
She paused, her hand hovering over the cradle. She didn’t turn to him, didn’t have the will to deny him to his face anymore. “If that is what you think this is, you are welcome to take the boy and leave.”
He gave her no words for that.
Astraea would be fine. Children fell ill all of the time. The healer was confident in the girl’s recovery and even if they hadn’t been, Hyal was ready to slit her wrist to make it certain. He knew that look in her eye, the way Pride’s scars seemed to glow.
It had never occurred to him Pride should take exception to how she bowed to him. Not until he saw those scars glow for his child.
Hyal was still proud. Still had been years ago when he asked why she replaced the bedding in her room. She’d given him a single word and nothing more. Refused to show weakness, but unable to lie.
“Blood.”
He ripped the half-rotted door to her room open, the magical locks unable to overcome structural weakness. He tore the bedding off her mattress and threw it on the floor.
Blood.
The mattress was too expensive to replace.
Blood.
Not one large stain. Several.
He remembered her, curled in that spot. Body shaking silently in pain, all of her magic unable to stop it, unable to still herself while she suffered with child.
So much blood.
She should have died.
He should have lost her.
For the first time since he tore his way to freedom with his own bare hands he felt. And he felt cold. So terribly cold.
“Yes,” she said hours later. She didn’t look away from the stains. “Now leave me.”
