While he was breaking into the castle vaults, looking for any information to get the tyrant king off the throne, his wife was having tea with the very same man. He wasn’t aware of if until he came home that evening and found her sitting at their small kitchen table, tending to their meager chipped tea set.
“Come,” she said, beckoning him toward the table, perfectly set out as though they were royals themselves, though several pieces of the aged tea set were missing or long broken. “I must tell you about my afternoon.”
Money had been scarce in the kingdom, everything had been scarce in the kingdom since the tyrant child of a man had taken over from his kind father, gone too soon. Tea was a rarity, especially in their house over the past few months.
He sat, hoping tea meant good news. They had been trying for a child, both of them on the brink of the wrong side of time to bring a child into the world, the world itself a chaotic mess to bring a child into. Deep down, he still hoped.
Deep down, he hoped he would be the one to turn the tide and usher in a new era with a better king upon the throne. In his own misfortune, the search of the castle vaults had come up empty, but the shame burned too deep to tell his own wife of his failures.
The less she knew, the better.
The tea cup before him was empty, small dings and chips along the lip and permanent stains from years of use. The same tea set he had inherited from his parents, mixed in with what she had brought from what had been left of her family home nearly two decades earlier. The table was empty, save for their chipped tea set. The tea not quite ready to serve, but the kettle humming gently on the stove.
“I had tea with the king today,” she said, looking right at him, quite proud of herself. It was not the accomplishment he was expecting, but it peaked his interest.
The castle guard didn’t let just anyone in. He wondered how she had managed it, and what had come from it. There were more questions than answers then, but he simply waited and listened.
When she didn’t continue right away, he asked his first question. “Well,” he said, the anticipation burning him. “How did it go?”
She gave him a smug smile. “I didn’t care much for him nor his policies, but he certainly does enjoy his tea.” She lifted a half empty vial from under the table, somewhere under her skirts, the sickly neon yellow liquid catching just enough of the light. “It made it quite easy to hide a few drops of Mama’s poison into each cup when he was distracted with—“ she gave him a smug look, easy enough to read into. “—Other things.”
The joy and the curse of feminine wiles.
If the king couldn’t be shown to the people as a fraud, poison was the next best thing, he supposed. He had never been so proud of her, so enamored with her skills. So ready to take her to bed and—
The kettle whistled as she stood from the table to tend to it. He watched as she lifted the lid of the tea pot, cracked and jagged and poured the boiling steaming water in. Tea had never been so exciting as he waited for the rest of her tale of her afternoon with the king.
They sat for a moment in silence, waiting for the tea to fully brew. He watched her, and the subtleness of her. She had grown into her age, worn it like a badge of honor, even though she had always been wise beyond her years. She used to do slight of hand tricks before she had been married and resigned to knitting and creating for a child that would never come. Or at least not yet.
They still had time, he realized. The fact that she had made it to the king first while he had found nothing was nothing more than a shove forward into the inevitable. He wanted to bed her for being so smart, so resourceful.
“What happened next?” He asked. A kind of foreplay before the foreplay, an excitement that was purely mental and nothing else, for the time being.
A satisfied smile crossed her lips. Then she put her finger to them. “I’m not sure I should tell you all that happened while I was there. A lady has to keep some secrets to herself.”
He could accept that, especially since she had done in a few hours what he and his rebellion had failed to do in years. She had actually seen the man who most claimed didn’t exist at all, or was merely a figurehead.
“What’s to happen now?” He asked instead.
She stood and moved toward him with a sway of her hips. She reached past him, brushing against him in a way that set his nerves alive and took hold of the teapot. She poured the tea into his cup, slow and steady, the stream of gold in the light and smelling more heavenly than the chipped China portrayed. Next, she dropped in two sugar cubes, chipped too, with a plink, plop and added just a drop of cream.
“Drink up, dear,” she said, rubbing her hand across his shoulder, seductive and slow. “There’s so much more to my afternoon than you’ll know.”
He took the first sip. An absolute delight of flavors and aromas danced on his tongue as he watched her move back across the table.
She sat back down in her chair, but didn’t pour herself a cup. She simply watched him enjoy his, and enjoy it he did. He thought to ask why she hadn’t joined him.
A clink of glass against the table. The same vial as before, only dregs of the sickly yellow liquid remaining, sliding down the side, thick and syrupy.
“Why?” He asked next, the effects of the poison kicking in quicker than he realized. “Why must you kill me too?” His arms and hands were numb, his skin on fire, his vision blurred.
She just laughed as he slumped from the chair, his muscles feeling like jelly.
“I never said I killed him.” She brushed her fingers across his cheek, wiping away blood tears from his face. “He simply offered me a better deal, a better life, if I turned on you.”
Then, she blew out the candles, turned out the lanterns. Then, she left him alone in agony.
