Carpathia

You had oceans for eyes--so I thought, a vast abyss of blue and grey as if they were the remains of a smoldering life that had been extinguished by a wave of blood and gold. You had rubies for lips, and a vast stretch of wooded land for hair, tangled with a strange magic I had only ever seen in mountain ranges. But still beautiful; still long and full and curvaceous, like a river carving its way through a mountain for hundreds of years. These things personified the depth in which I loved you: the soft curve of the hip, the ivory skin, the dew-drenched eyes, everything that met the standard for a beautiful, royal wife. And I could not be more proud of your beauty, but it was only long after your disappearance that I would miss the glint of light on your crown, or the lively curls that touched your face.

I never thought you would leave me. I never thought all those carefully woven gowns could suffocate you to death with the cruelty, absurd ideals, and high social status that accompanied those who were royal. Death. No matter how beautiful you were, death screamed from all angles of your entity: in words, expression, and posture. The sound had been deafening! I desperately I would have heard it, but the call of victory blinded me from your desperation. Perhaps it was when I wasn't looking that your eyes were as dark as a cave; it was often absent from your face at all formal occasions. you were the epitome of a perfect wife: the perfect shape of your red mouth carefully pulled into a smile, your form so poised that I wanted to dance all night with you.

I don't believe our political marriage hindered either of their searches for real love, so to speak. I didn't know what made me so distant and cold and cruel--perhaps it was war, but I never once moved from my elaborately fashioned throne. The magnitude at which I loved you did not play any part in my conquest to be a great ruler, and that is the way of Kings. What a sad thing!

All those years, all those dreadful years of forcing you to stay here, caging you in a dark corner of the castle, came down in one all too terrible shuffling of an unfolded message. Printesa...mortea... As my mind struggled to process this news, a stroke of horror and agony crossed me; I began to feel a black demon choking my heart with a devilish grin on its beastly face. But then blood cells began to burst in my old eyes, my hands had become white with a tight grip, and the insides of my iron body were smelted into nothing. I was so enraged that I wanted to ride across the country and destroy you--obliterate every single atom of your body that I loved with every single atom in mine, but a change it would not have made. For the first time in my life--my reign, I could no longer harm you for my own gratification.

There were times that we exchanged glances by the fire as though it were the first time our eyes met, and those few seconds truly encapsulated what I felt for you despite my violent episodes and ice cold glares. Sweat often beaded across my forehead when we were conveniently left alone together; it was as though, after years of marriage, that we were strangers. It used to beckon an untamable violence in me, knowing that you no longer loved me. I loved you, still. But I do not question why you hated me so.

You gave me the greatest love anyone could ever know, and for that I am so thankful. The time I have to face what I did to you is short and merciless. You could call me a bastard, a monster, an abomination, yet none of those names would ever amount the agony I will never be prepared to face.

It was always you, always you. We were two vines, growing upon a single stake. God created us as one, an entity divided in two, destined to find each other in one lifetime or another. I have no doubt that you were--are, my other half. And now I've lost you. I am no longer whole, I am no longer a man.

You will never believe that even though I had you under an impatient hand, I loved you all along. I loved you so much that you made me miserable, and I made you miserable. Not even the crisp Carpathian air could sooth your despair, nor could it sooth mine. I found solace in the toils of war and an uncontrollable need to slaughter...destroy...infiltrate.

"I spoke with the blind priest today. He believes you should see him before you depart," you said with a voice as precious and breakable as china.

"I do believe, my dear wife, that the blind priest's superstitious beliefs are to no avail when facing the fall of our north west barriers; his warnings have proved invalid in the past. The man is a nothing but an insolent old wizard, I say."

"As your wife, I will stand by your decisions if they are for the well being of this glorious empire, but I must disagree with your declining his invitation," you paused, as if to catch the rising heat of anger that was beginning to appear on my face. "I am concerned.

"The well being of this 'glorious empire' is entirely in my hands, and I do not believe you are in a position that would allow you to take it out of them," I spat out viciously. "Your job is to be a dutiful wife and nurture your family's good name. The crossing of God and war is no place for a lady to be, and no such thing for her to discuss!" My anger was brimming right into my eyes, forcing my head to pound and heart to race like a Roman chariot.

The dwindling minutes I had to pull you by the arm and snatch you back into my life disappeared as quickly as the shallow bruise it would have laid, and I could not unhinge my bones from their locked position as I listened to a sharp breath hitch in your throat during that dark night hour.

Finally, the moment had come that you would slip right out from under my very tired hands. I didn't know where my mind was when I felt the breeze of the open window brushing my face with the sound of a wave crashing on the rocks below the window, but it was far from your beautiful face. I failed to heed the warning of the silence that lurked in the night. It grew and grew in the space between us as we slept, growling like a tiger in the far east, its warm chest rising up and down in the rhythm of a wave.

I never meant to become this beast, I never meant to turn that skin of yours into plum leather, I never meant to push you over the edge. All these I-never-meants will never bring you back. What a sorry creature I am.