Maude closed her eyes, picturing her mother’s warm face and kind brown eyes. It had been nearly two decades since she’d seen the woman, but her face was still clear as day behind Maude’s closed lids.

“She was the first person to treat me so kindly,” Maude said. “And probably one of the only people to do so in the empire.” Maude said.

“What did she do to deserve such ardent praise from a daughter who only knew her a few short years?” Jaspar asked.

“She listened to me,” Maude answered, remembering how her mother’s smile could illuminate a whole room. “I’m sure all I had to tell her at that point was pointless baby babble, but she would listen and respond to me nonetheless.”

“Ah,” Jaspar said, his voice warm. “She must have been very patient with you then.”

“She was,” Maude agreed. “And she was more than happy to play with me. I was my parent’s only child at that time, so I didn’t have other kids to play with. And my father and the maids didn’t want to play with me either.”

“What kind of things did you play with her?” he asked.

“House, mainly,” Maude said with a laugh. “She even let me pretend she was the baby and take care of her.”

Maude heard Jaspar laugh, and she opened her eyes and found his. “She sounds like she just really enjoyed spending time with you.”

Maude smiled softly and nodded. “Every minute of my life that I can remember when she was alive was the time I spent with her,” she said. “In a lot of ways, my mother was my world at that point.” She shook her head. “My father and Zara always said that she had been a worthless, pathetic, and frail person. It boggles my mind to think that part of the reason why she was so frail was because my father made her that way.”

Jaspar winced. “What could be possibly going through your father’s mind to cause him to say things like that to his own daughter?”

Maude laughed softly. “I don’t know,” she answered. “If he’s the kind of person who is more than happy to murder his own father and wife, I doubt he thinks in the same way the rest of us do.”

“A solid point.” Jaspar waited for a beat, and then asked, “Do you know why they called her worthless?”

Maude shook her head. “I have no clue. If I had to guess, it’s probably because they saw her as weak. She was the kind of person to put others before herself. She was never cruel to anyone, even if she had a reason to be. She never intentionally made people cry, or take shots at their weak spots. My father and Zara are the complete opposite in every way. They will use people’s weak spots to manipulate and get what they want out of other people. My mother refused, so she didn’t really have a whole lot to offer my father.”

“Didn’t her family have a lot to offer, though?” Jaspar pointed out. “The late Duke of Holloway had your father marry your mother for a reason.”

Maude shook her head. “I’ve only heard vague murmurings of rumors, but it sounds as though my grandfather intended to rebel against the emperor. As long as I can remember, my father has thought the emperor was worth supporting. So I wonder if my mother’s family would have helped my grandfather cause an insurrection.”

Jaspar’s eyes widened, clearly surprised at what she’d just said. “So there are nobles in the empire who feel discontent towards the emperor?”

Maude pursued her lips and nodded. “There’s really only a couple. I always thought they were strange until I came to Aulbert and learned about what is actually going on in the empire.”

Jaspar nodded. “The emperor has tight control over the information that is distributed to the empire’s citizens. So it wouldn’t be that surprising if few know what has been going on. The nobles are also the group of people who have benefitted the most out of the emperor’s policies, so it would be unsurprising that there are only a few who would find issue with his reign.” He glanced over at Maude. “But enough about that. What else have you heard about your mother?”

Maude nodded, acknowledging the subject change. “From people outside of my family, I heard that she was revered as a woman of high integrity in high society. My friend’s mother once told me that my father had the envy of all the young gentlemen, having been able to marry my mother…” Maude felt a tear sliding down her cheek. “What would all of those men say if they knew he’d murdered her?”

She heard Jaspar gulp next to her. “And only five short years after she was wed to your father, too. She was still very young.”

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

“She wasn’t much older than ourselves,” Maude replied.

Next to her, Jaspar shook his head. “Your father is truly despicable,” he said. It seemed as though he didn’t know what else to say.

Maude swallowed hard, feeling her eyes welling up with tears again. “I once overheard my father telling my step-mother that the only reason they hadn’t gotten married sooner was because my mother had been pregnant with me. He’d been overjoyed, expecting me to be a son. He’d been extremely upset when he’d had a daughter…” Maude started choking on her words. Jaspar pulled her tighter into his chest. “I-I could have n-never imagined he’d a-actually killed her,” she sobbed. “I was lucky t-to have gotten as much t-time with her as I-I did,” she whimpered.

Jaspar started rubbing her back in a slow, smooth circle. Though the gesture was certainly comforting to her, she couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the surfacing memories.

“The family physician was baffled by her condition,” Maude said. “Here was a very healthy young woman, who’d given birth a few short years ago, suddenly coughing up blood. He ran all of the tests that he could. Everything seemed fine. She had only a few other symptoms, since she wasn’t feeling well, and she was weak and tired, but that was it. Looking back now, my guess would be that he had poisoned her.”

“Do you know how long she coughed up blood before she passed?” Jaspar asked.

“Mmm,” Maude said, thinking back. She squinted her eyes. The memories were faded, yellowing with age in her mind. “Maybe about two weeks or so?” she said.

“He was probably feeding her arsenic then, somehow,” Jaspar said.

“Arsenic?” Maude asked.

“It’s a very common poison,” Jaspar replied. “It’s easily purchased in the empire, especially when you’re close with the emperor.”

Maude couldn’t suppress a shiver. How many bad fates had she potentially escaped simply by no longer living in the empire?

“I remember that because the family physician couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, he advised keeping everyone out of the room. I was of the age that I wanted to sleep with my mother every night.” She felt the words catch in the back of her throat.” The physician was genuinely worried that my mother’s disease would pass on to me. She must have known to some extent what was going on, though, as she told him that she was going to let me stay with her anyway.” Another sobbed choked out of the back of her throat. Jaspar started patting her back again. “Those were the best two weeks of my childhood,” Maude said. “I knew she wasn’t feeling well, but I had no concept of death. And she was more than happy to listen to me talk and play house with me.” Another sob racked her body.

“Your mother must have loved you so very much to have spent her last two weeks with her daughter, as much as she could.”

Maude nodded, whimpering into Jaspar’s chest. Looking back, it was easy to see that even in her last moments, her mother’s focus had entirely been on her daughter.

“Of course,” Maude continued after catching her breath, “Because I was sleeping in the bed with her, I was also the person who found her dead when she passed away.” She swallowed hard, the ashen, pale face of her beautiful mother coming to mind, and the cold, stiff body she’d felt as she’d tried to wake her mother. As soon as her mother wouldn’t rouse, Maude had started screaming. Shortly thereafter, the physician had come, pronounced her mother dead, and Maude had been pulled away by a nurse maid she’d never met before.

“Looking back now, her funeral happened a very short time after she’d passed,” Maude continued outloud to Jaspar. “My father had probably been preparing for it from the moment that he’d decided that it was time to get rid of her.” Maude’s voice trembled a little, and looked up at Jaspar. “It was only a few short weeks later that he married Zara. She’d probably already been pregnant with my younger brother when my father moved her in. That’s the type of slimeball he is.”

Jaspar grimaced. “I used to think that the emperor was the worst man I’d ever heard of. Your father gives him a run for his money.”

Maude laughed softly. “My father is so much worse than I’d ever been able to imagine,” she remarked.

Jaspar’s grimace deepened. “Did Zara always treat you the way you talked about her treating you?” he asked.

“Always,” Maude confirmed. “I’ve never received even a single ounce of love from that woman, despite her instance of me calling her ‘Mother.’ She made sure that the word ‘Mother’ would always mean something negative to me. There’s no doubt in my mind that her goal was to obliterate the light my mother had tried to bring into my life. And she very nearly was successful a few times.”

Jaspar shook his head again. “This whole story is awful. I can’t imagine having gone through what you’ve been through, and still being able to tell the tale.”

“You’re telling me,” Maude replied. “I’m extremely thankful that I made it out of that hell hole alive. And now I have yet another reason to be grateful that my kind, innocent mother is no longer suffering at the hands of my father.” She paused, feeling another sob threatening to come up again. “Not that it changes the fact that I wish she was still with me and never had to suffer in the first place.”

Jaspar nodded in agreement. “She is probably better off having only suffered a short while under your father’s tyranny.”

Maude felt something harden within her, even as the tears started to flow again. She placed her face again into Jaspar’s warm, strong chest, and cried.

I will never forgive my father, she thought. He’s gone too far, far too many times to be forgivable. And the emperor… Maude felt herself choke at how her father had promised her to be the emperor’s concubine while she’d been so young that she could barely put a proper sentence together. The emperor is just as bad as my father, she thought. The emperor didn’t care if his sword saint lived or died. He’d sent her on a suicide mission. That had been his tactic.

Maude felt the warmth of rage stirring inside her. I may not be able to bring my sword against my enemy, she thought, but that doesn’t mean I won’t do everything I can to ensure their downfall.