Maybe Sergie was right after all!
Lila was shaking the first time Viktor saw her.
Unlike the other people he'd met, Lila's fingers were trembling.
Lila was trembling from rage.
He remembered: "She won't survive this world."
Viktor also remembered how he was wrong.
Now, Lila didn't shake.
She made Viktor shake as well.
Now it was questionable to Viktor whether that made him proud… or afraid.
Now, Viktor was watching her from the shadows of the upper landing as Lila passed the great hall like she owned it, not dressed like a queen, and not attempting to be one.
A lieutenant came forward to Lila with something urgent, and his voice was quiet and sped. Lila listened, and then sharply nodded once. Her command was swift.
Clean.
Flawless.
Lila didn't have to attempt to be a queen.
But she was one now.
It should've been him giving orders.
He wasn't looked at.
He was looked at by no one.
She got all the sight upon her.
Until now, Viktor remembered the girl from that red velvet chair. The girl who wouldn't meet his eyes, whose voice broke when she lied, and whose silence was a scream blanketed in words waiting to be uttered.
He recalled instructing her on how to shoot a gun,
How to lie without blinking,
How to seize an audience with nothing other than her glance.
He had cultivated her lethalness.
Simply put, he had never anticipated that she could become a threat to him.
Viktor pulled away from the railing and made his way to his study.
'Today's whiskey isn't burning enough,' he thinks.
Then comes the sting of another nameless text.
She no longer needs you.
She learnt how to dominate.
Now, think—
What purpose does a queen have for her knight… once the battle has been won?'
_______________________________________________________________
Words lost their meaning.
There was no need.
But, devoid of a response, left with the chilling truth bruising under his skin.
He didn't save her,
He shaped her,
And the more she struck,
The better it was for him who shaped her.
______________________________________________________________________
Like a climax in a flimsy love story, he happened to see her amid the sleepless nights.
Half-decaying moonlight pooled across the floor, illuminating the battered woman shivering near his bedside.
With the moonlight illuminating her bites, as revealed skin drank nearly all light, bled land awaited seductive heartless winter, naked except for moonlight, holding t-shirt dread-stained hem.
Her eyes were squeezed shut, barely trying to hold silence,
He struggled to abandon hope,
She had no reason to scold him.
Fighting temptation clad in drawstrings, Lila countered the quoted motion.
Lila faced him, reaching for his arm, waiting for passion curves to erupt on his drinking hand.
"My life is a constant battle to survive."
"Something tells me you aren't the same girl I helped escape from that house."
"No," she replied. "And you're not the man who carried me out, either."
She gave him a moment of silence.
"You preferred me strong, Viktor. You expected me to be unbreakable. So don't act all shocked that I stopped needing you to hold me standing."
He got close enough that he could smell the iron in her blood, the rose on her throat, the ash still on her hands.
"I didn't teach you to become a queen."
"No," she whispered while getting past him, "You taught me to stop kneeling."
____________________________________________________________________________
He had transformed her into a weapon.
But he didn't expect her to turn the knife upon herself.
And the worst of it?
The beautiful side of it…
He was falling in love with the part of himself that was uncontrolled.