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The Londres Affair (Meillur Only)

PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 9:58 pm
by Great Hyruke
Cece watched the blurring lights of the city through the ever constant rain against the window of her town car. It was a beautiful sight. Bright white, purple and red stars bloomed through the towers, dashing across the sky as they followed through the looping roads of the capital city. Londres was an amalgamation of styles, the careful art of the dreams of women and men who’s ruled over the city over the last century. There were the gothic revival style of the Queen, which perfectly reflected her own gothic out look on the world, paranoid with the shadows of enemies and with her own dark obsession with the macabre. There were the gleaming white marble and swooping blue domes of the elderly King-Emperor from his youth when he’d played architect for ruins still smoking from the wake of the Merveilleux War.

What would Cece add to it? When she would be the one to lead and stir the mantle of the nation. It would be her turn soon enough. She had no desire to have that turn sped up. She adored Auntie Caroline, even with all of her morbid eccentricities. She was a woman of great respect and honor, and whilst she was constantly adapting, Cece was well aware that she would not live forever. Perhaps several more decades, but that prediction would grow smaller and smaller with every passing year. But eventually that number of years would fall to zero. And eventually her crown would pass on and then Cece would have to be the one to decide which style would be added to the capital’s skyline.

Glass. Cece would want to add glass. So that everyone could look out and see the beauty around them. That would be great.

It was a daunting destiny that hung over her, the sword of Damocles swinging from dusk to dawn, dawn to dusk. It was a weight that had sat comfortably on her slim shoulders for years. But it had started to weigh on her heavily over the last year of her life. For years it had been a thing of light and feathers, a promise of the future, but for her now, it was a ton of bricks. Not that anyone seemed to notice. The public, which she supposed were the ones who mattered the most for someone like her, were oblivious to the personal struggle that afflicted her. For the best. No one wants to hear the whining of a princess.

But worse, it seemed that even those who were closest to her didn’t see the change. They didn’t see how she had to cover up the dark rings that decorated the lids of her eyes. They didn’t notice that the color of her own tawny skin had faded to an ivory shade. They didn’t see that her long blond hair had grown lighter, she’d even found a grey hair strand during her honeymoon. Charles assured her that she was still beautiful. Everyone said she was beautiful. Everyone thought she was beautiful. No one said she wasn’t. Save one. Cece pushes her blond hair over her ear as she looked at her reflect in the water decorated window. Diamonds glittered around her throat, resting in the hollow of her throat on display by the shallow neckline of her yellow dress.

She let out a soft sigh. She wish this car ride would go faster. She wanted to go home. Well. That wasn’t exactly what she wanted to. Cece had had enough of dining and dancing with the Russen ambassador and the visiting Grand Duke that had come to the party hosted at the ornate embassy. She and her husband had played the role of the young, beautiful and delightful royal couple entertaining foreign dignitaries. Now the facade could fall.

PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 11:14 pm
by Dutch-Empire
“What the hell is wrong with you now?”

Arthur snapped as he shot a glare at Cece. Cece would sigh and whine about one thing or another. It was annoy as hell. And she had the indecency to sigh and bitch about some all of the time. And it was never as if she would say something. No. She never said anything. She always sighed. She would sigh. That was made it the worse thing for Arthur. He could have dealt with all the whining if it was verbal, if Cece actually spoke to him about what was wrong. But no. No. She had to go and be passive aggressive about it. Arthur hated that. It was so unnecessary. He suspected it was a Hyrukian thing. Frigid bitches all of them, hiding behind the stoic mask of the void of emotions.

Arthur, the youngest son of the Empress of the Dutch had, naturally grown up in the Netherlands, despite not having a drop of native Dutch blood in his veins. Nonetheless he was fully embraced by his home culture. And in the last decade of the world, the Dutch had been forged by the Empress’ own designs for what the world was to be under her direction. The Dutch Fury had quickly taken root into the world of the empire as a cultural corner stone. Arthur, favorite son of the Empress, who’d served in the great March of Progress, also known as the Eacusian War in the Aogaian Campaign, was the ideal version of the Dutch Fury induced gentleman.

Thus, Arthur didn’t exactly mesh well with the stoic nature of Great Hyruke. He was a young man fueled by emotion, passion and fire. Here everything was emotionless, passionless and cold. Arthur, inheriting a caramel mixture of his father’s light skin and his mother’s dark skin, though he’d gotten her eyes and curly black hair. He’d dressed in a black suit and tie for the evening, a orange blossom pinned to his lapel. The Russens, as rough and as gruff as they were, were total etiquette snobs. They adored the life of cultured society, probably because it was something they lacked entirely.

Meeting with the Russen Ambassador had been on the carefully crafted schedule that he himself had made. Since he’d been offered to the Princess of Éirea with a pretty bow around his neck for slaughter, he’d been forced to end his impressive military career. He couldn’t serve the Dutch whilst married to Cece, and he refused to join the inferior Hyrukian counterparts. And not content to be a simple househusband, despite that being all that the Queen wanted of him, Arthur had decided to throw himself with the taste of managing diplomatic interests.

So he’d arranged for them to attend a party at the Russen Embassy to wine and dine with the Russen ambassador and the visiting Grand Duke. Arthur has spent the entire night trying not to stare at the Grand Duke with his heart filled with envy. The Grand Duke, a man who was young, handsome, unmarried, and in the Russen navy, sailing across the world. Arthur looked away from Cece, biting his lip. To be so free. He dared not think about it. A starving man should not dream of feasts.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 5:56 am
by Great Hyruke
What is wrong? Cece wanted to scream. She wanted to jerk her head away from the mirror and to bore into Arthur’s eyes and scream at the top of her lungs till the rainy world outside could hear through the bullet proof shell of the town car. She wanted to pounce on him with her fingers and claw at him. To scratch his eyes out. To cut up the pretty little image that he had crafted up for everyone to see. How would the camera see him then? Would he still be their precious prince with scars running down his face?

Cece, of course, didn’t say that. She had been raised to never raise her voice. Screaming was not becoming of a princess in general, certainly not the future Queen. But oh how she wanted to. She had suffered so under her marriage. Arthur was rude and mean and cruel. Why was he even angry with her? She hadn’t even done anything. It was as if every single thing she did, every breath or blink, as voluntary or as involuntary as it was, was to be taken as a personal insult to him. Cece found it bold of him to assume that she would devote any time to such s task. Cece didn’t even know why he disliked her.

Cece took a deep breath and after a moment tore her gaze away from the window and looked over to Arthur. Her thin pink lips, in a fashionably conservative shade of red, were pulled into a tight smile.

“No dear, this is nothing wrong, I am just tired. I’m just ready to be home.”

She quickly looked away from Arthur. Even in the dark he was quite handsome, the reasons for why the public adored him were not entirely lost on Cece. She had love him once. Maybe. She had not loved him on their wedding day. She had had no choice in the matter. For as much as people liked to think that royal couples were living fairytales, even nowadays there was cold calculation behind it. She had had a host of princes paraded before her, as if they were show ponies and she were to pick her favorite. But she had hesitated and meandered. And finally came a show pony her aunt couldn’t refuse. Arthur, son of an Empress and a King, secured an alliance that insured Hyruke’s several in a world were they struggled to be s great power.

So no, she hadn’t loved him when they met, or when they wed, or when they kissed for the first time. But there had been, in that strange time between then and now, from strangers to the bitterest of lovers that they chose to call themselves when even that was too kind, when she’d loved him. For a month. For a week. For perhaps a night or two. But then that fantasy had been quickly shattered. Cece had been left to wallow in its shards.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 6:56 am
by Dutch-Empire
Arthur shot another glare at her as he heard and even deeper sigh. His fingers curled into a fist and then uncurled. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to smash the glass out of the door. To let the rain sweep into the car. Though he knew that would never happen. The glass wouldn’t budge beneath his knuckles, and he would no doubt just end up hurting himself. And even if he could, there wouldn’t be a storm that swept into the car. Even the storms that seemed to constantly roll over the capital city did so passively and impotently.

He listened to her. He grew ever more infuriated with her. Cece had mastered the Princess smile, polite and regal, with a glimmer of emotion behind it. She’d mastered it long before he’d come along. But he’d come from a family that was just as royal as hers, more so actually. He saw right through the facade, the well made but ultimately transparent beneath his own expert gaze barricades that she had been taught to raise up. She certainly did look tired. What had turned her so plain looking, so distressed looking? Her beauty was gone, like a lily that had been power washed and limply still tried to bloom.

“Liar.”

Arthur hissed the words. He hadn’t meant to say it like that. It had come out harsher than he’d meant, though he had perfectly well meant for it to be harsh. This strange limbo world that he was forced to call home with smudged colors and hazy shades of grey, white and blue needed some harshness. But then Cece was looking away once again, and he suddenly didn’t feel so bad about how harsh he was. His fingers curled back into a fist and then just as quickly uncurled, one by one. Arthur wanted to punch a hole into a wall. Just to break something. He considered hitting the glass if only to feel something.

Yes, he could tell that Cece was tired. Everyone thought that she was the queen of social engagements, but as he’d discovered over the course of being married to her, that was hardly the case. She the queen of social engagements when it suited her. Among her friends she did perfectly. Though he supposed it was easy to be lively and perfect around just two people. Three of you counted Arthur’s brother in law that Cece for one reason or another managed to get along with platonically, a double miracle in Arthur’s view. But outside of that, Cece, Arthur has discovered, that she mostly just faked it till she made it. Terribly unprofessional in his opinion. It generally left her eager for reclusion afterwards.

But tired as she was, she didn’t want to go to their house. Did it really qualify as a home? She wanted something else. She was hiding something. She had been for some time. Of that Arthur was certain. It made him suspicious. What exactly did she have to hide from him?

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 7:54 am
by Great Hyruke
The word liar rang through Cece’s ears like the thumping ring of a hammer striking a hot piece of steel against the blacksmith’s anvil. It hummed through her ears, rolling over her brain and burning into her thoughts. No one liked being called a liar. Cece was among those people. But could she be angry? She didn’t feel as if she were lying, but nor did she honestly feel as if she were being entirely honest. But that gave him no right to our right declare her to be a liar, capital L. She wanted to scream at him, ‘what do you want me to say?’. For a moment Cece wanted to toss up her hands into the air and cry out in a grand display of exasperation, and scream. He always made her want to scream. Scream till she couldn’t scream anymore. Every molecule in her body shook with the thought of screaming.

“What do you want me to say?”

She didn’t scream it. Cece’s voice was deadly calm, cold as ice, just as her aunt had taught to speak when she was dealing with a hostile diplomat who she needed to speak seriously with. It was a tactic that Cece felt ashamed of for the fact that she had to use it on her own husband. She and Arthur had to speak to one another as if they were strangers. Of course Arthur always had to be a bit more over the top and crude than she ever could. More than she could ever allow herself. She looked calmly at him, her smile having fallen away. He had done this. He didn’t want her to smile, to at least pretend to be content, fine. She wouldn’t pretend. She wouldn’t smile. She would let him see just how much sorrow he invoked into her very soul.

“What, exactly do you want me to say, Arthur?”

She repeated her words, adding emphasis on his name. Did he want her to tell him that she never wanted to go the Russen ambassador’s party? She had had no desire to wine and dine with the foreign dignitaries no matter how important the relationship between Great Hyruke and Russlande was told to be. She’d had no desire to be bored with pleasantries with the Russen Grand Duke and his boring adventures of crisscrossing the globe. Did he want her to tell him that she hated that they had to ride in the same car with him? She wanted to be in a car by herself, so that she could literally do anything else. She wanted to read a book or hell just watch a movie in the arms who actually cared for her. Did he want her to tell that she didn’t love him?

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 9:40 am
by Dutch-Empire
Arthur looked at Cece with narrow eyes as he let his scowl over take his face. So she was hiding something. She was becoming defensive. He leaned closer to her.

“What I want you to say?”

Arthur scoffed at the ridiculousness of the question. Did she have to be so allusive with her question, with every conversation they had she ovoscated and danced around the topic.

“Do you hear yourself? Do you honestly? I don’t want you say something just because you feel like that’s what I want to hear. I want you to be honest with me. Why the hell is that so hard? Why the hell do you have to make a problem out of every little thing?”

Arthur’s voice started to rise, but he barely noticed even as he started to yell.

“I can’t ask you a goddamn question without you acting as if I’ve beaten you bloody! Ben when we are fucking silent you play this fucking wounded bird act! I can’t stand it, and I just don’t understand what it is! And now you are lying to me and hiding things!”

Arthur let out a heated breath, the words tumbling out faster and louder than he’d meant for them to be. He shook his head and bit the joint of his index finger.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 10:00 am
by Great Hyruke
Cece forced herself not to recoil from the roaring Dutch lion that she had the misfortune to be legally bound to till death or divorce did them part. She’d been trying to avoid this. Arthur’s temper was short and fiery. A volcano waiting for an eruption at every turn and it seemed that he’d finally boiled over. Sat there biting her tongue so hard that she feared that she bit it off. She considered for the briefest fraction of a second do so that she would have an excuse to never have to talk to her husband again. But alas, she rather did like her tongue and pain had never been something she liked to endure. Which was why this marriage was so horrible.

Cece forced her words out, releasing her tongue and ungritting her teeth. Each syllable came out cold as ice.

“Do, not, yell at me.”

Cece tried to hold his gaze, to mimic that of his aunt. She had stared down armies, Emperors and kings, Prime ministers and presidents. That was a stare that she had not yet mastered but knew that she must. And she was certain that she had absolutely no qualms with testing it out first on her husband. Cece would not let herself continued to be bullied by Arthur. But as much as she tried to muster that strong and cold mannerism of her aunt, she felt herself fail at the attempt, falling short of that coldness. There was tiredness in her and even a bit of fear that climbed in her like rotten vines, threatening to strangle her.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 10:30 am
by Dutch-Empire
Arthur put his head in his hands as and slammed his head against the leather headrest of the leather seat. He did so again. And he let out a scream that was only slightly muffled by his hands as he slide down in his seat, the seatbelt holding him in place, at least enough that he didn’t melt down to the floor of the town car. He just couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t do anything without Cece taking up the role of being the victim, even when she was the one who was lying flat in his face and when she was the one hiding things. At least, if nothing else and he was sure that there was much else, Arthur was honest with Cece.

Cece however, refused to be honest with him. And then she had the audacity to act as if she were the victim. She had the audacity to act as if she were some calm songbird whilst he were some savage dog, which he was anything but. Yes he had yelled. But that wasn’t the point. He would not, he refused to be, made the fool of this relationship. He was her husband for god sake, and even if in Hyruke men were considered inferior to women, he was Dutch and he would not be treated as if he were the erratic househusband who didn’t know how to control his emotions. He was the future Prince Consort of a Queen and he would demand the respect that he was due. Even from his wife.

“I’m sorry.”

Arthur, having ceased his scream that reverberated through the backseat chamber spoke softly. He hadn’t meant to yell at Cece. He didn’t want to yell at her. He never did. But she just made him so angry sometimes. He took several deep breaths, trying to calm him back down so that he could express himself in a way that she could understand and couldn’t find an excuse to dance around his words. Just once. He wanted to have an actual conversation with her. Just once. He lowered his hand from his face and looked back to her, ignoring her stare’s coldness and meeting her lovely eyes with his own dark brown ones.

“I just don’t want you to lie to me. Just tell me the truth. Please, Cece. That’s all I want. What is it that has made you like this.”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 10:53 am
by Great Hyruke
“What has made me like this?”

The disgusted question came out of Cece before she could have time to carefully process.

“I am not some invalid who has developed a condition. Because I did not enjoy a party doesn’t mean that I am transformed into some, some thing.”

Cece paused, considering this. She felt ashamed. She snapped though. Shaking her head the coldness that she had been trying to infuse into her syllables in an effort to mimic that of her aunt had fallen away. It was replaced with a heated anger. She stammered out her words, speaking with anger with her hand as she got in Arthur’s face, restraint having been shattered by her emotions.

“And, and if I have transformed into some horrid thing that offends you so much, if You really are wondering why I ‘am like this’, then take a look in the mirror. It’s you. You this to me.”

Cece shook her head, the strands of blond hair, grey strands still hiding amongst them fell free from behind her ears and fell into her face.

“I used to be so happy. And now...”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 11:25 am
by Dutch-Empire
Arthur frown at Cece and felt a twinge of guilt eat at his heart. He never wanted to Cece upset. He wasn’t sure what it was that made him want her to not hate him. He wasn’t sure that he loved her. He had not loved her when he’d been instructed to propose to her for the sake of the Dutch Empire’s need for allies. He had been charmed by her looks, though not captivated, though that’s the word that he’d used for the dozens of interviews that he’d been apart of when they’d gone before the public. His heart did not call out to her. But he cared for her, perhaps in the way that once had to for someone whom they spent so much together, even when they didn’t along.

“Cece,”

Arthur pushed the strands of his wife’s hair that had fallen out of place out of her hair and held her cheek in his hand. He lifted her head up so that she had to look up at him. They had been happy once. It had been a learned happiness. But it had been a happiness that the two of them had made together. They’d brought a child into the world together, and they had been happy. Sure the Queen of Great Hyruke has been disappointed that their child, named after his father had been a boy and not the girl and heir so hoped for, and had blamed that on Arthur himself, but there had been the few days after the birth of their son were they’d, or so he’d thought, been happy.

But then quickly that distant that they’d greeted each other at the alter had returned and they had now ended up here.

“Cece tell me what it is that I’ve done wrong. Please. Tell me why is it that you hate me so.”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 12:51 pm
by Great Hyruke
Cece shook her head in Arthur’s hand. His skin was warm. It was not exactly soft, he was too much of an active man, with too many of the rough mannerisms one came to expect of a military man, especially a young war hero like Arthur, champion of the Dutch Fury. Cece resisted the urge to curl up into his touch, the natural desire rising in her but she quickly combated it.

“I do not hate you Arthur. Please. Do not think that. I do not wish to hurt you. I do not hate you.”

But I do not love you. That part of her statement was left hanging in the air. She didn’t know how to say that. She didn’t want to say that. A husband and wife were supposed to love one another. They were the future ruler and consort of this country, they were suppose to model the way of the family in the kingdom. And yet how could they when they did not love one another? How was she supposed to be the model of the ideal Hyrukian woman when she could not even successfully navigate through her own marriage.

It was not as they were normal. They weren’t just any couple. They held the fate of nations in their union. Her love life and her political life. And that made it all the more difficult, because if she wanted one the other was directly tied to it. And she had no idea how dangerous it might be if she did try to break that tie.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 1:52 pm
by Dutch-Empire
Arthur watched Cece’s gaze as she spoke. Even as she let him hold her head in his hand, there was a sadness that he felt in her. Instead of the warmth and fire that one would expect from holding their wife and gazing into their eyes, he felt cold, both from her pale skin and in his heart. This was not how things were supposed to be. They were supposed to be models of the future, the great power couple and yet they were, despite what the pictures the pictures depicted, anything but.

“Cece,”

Arthur stopped himself and bit his lip.

Arthur acted in a way that he felt was probably foolish, but something he could not in the moment help himself. He leaned forward and gently kissed his wife. Her lips were soft, as he remembered, though not as sweet as he’d recalled. And still there was no rush in him. There was no desire for another kiss as he pulled away from her. Instead he simply felt nothing. It was as if he had kissed a marble statue, a marvelous piece of art, but something that did not and could not love you back. Arthur was not heartbroken. He had not wanted her love, not in particular, but it made him somewhat sad.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 2:04 pm
by Great Hyruke
Cece pulled away from Arthur, her eyes cask downwards. She hadn’t wanted to be kissed by him and she wish that he hadn’t done so. She wished that she had stopped him. There was no taste for her to to reflect upon in that lingering moment. She felt nothing from Arthur. Were once she might have been made into desire him based purely on physical attraction, but now that could not move her. She had detached herself so much from Arthur that she could not will herself to pretend. Tears burned and boiled up into her eyes. She couldn’t do this anymore.

“Please don’t.”

Cece pushed Arthur’s hand away from her cheek, perhaps a bit more so harshly than she should have allowed, but she didn’t want him to touch her again. Not ever.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 2:48 pm
by Dutch-Empire
Arthur rolled his eyes as he pulled away from Cece, biting the joint of his index finger. This couldn’t. This couldn’t go on much longer. They couldn’t keep this up. He waved his hand up in defeat. Tonight was not the night that they would solve any problems. He was done trying to be the one who tried to fix things whilst Cece was always trying to avoid them. She was the one who seemed to want to be unhappy. If that was what she wanted, fine, Arthur was more than happy to oblige.

He was done trying to understand her. She could go ahead and lie and hide all she wanted. He was done with this. He refuse to spend the rest of his life following around after this woman that he didn’t even love trying to understand her and pick apart her mind. She wanted to play games. Fine. She could play on her own. Arthur bit harder into his own flesh. This was utter bullshit. He hated this goddamn place. He wanted to go home. To his real home, in Amsterdam, or even better somewhere in the field in the midst of the fight, on the cusp of adventure. That was his real home, not whatever this was

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 3:34 pm
by Great Hyruke
With Arthur no longer speaking, Cece decided that she wasn’t going to engage in further conversation either. That was probably the best course of action. They had nothing to say to one another. Cece looked back to the window of the town car. The rain had stopped, though droplets if water were still dancing in rivulets across the glass like the tentacles of a jellyfish caught in the ocean current. Cece placed her fingers on the cool damp glass and traced her fingertips along the rivulets.

They looped through the smooth lanes of the capital to the southwestern edge of the city were suburbia and urban sprawl tangoed across the southern landscaped the island nation. Here in particular rise the mansions and luxurious town houses that dot the hills covered with well manicured lawns and ornamental forests, surrounded and surrounding picturesque parks. It was here that Cece and Arthur’s home, a modest luxury home, built on what had once been a royal cottage before it had been destroyed in the Merveilleux War stood.

Sandersfield House was a beautiful marble and greystone home that was built in the classic Queen Caroline gothic revival but made bright and light by the Princess of Éirea’s gentle touch. But as the town car approached the gate it looked as glooming as the Queen who governed over them.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 4:52 pm
by Dutch-Empire
Arthur patted his pockets for his key to the gate, not an actual key mind you but a little bracelet that could be scanned. Only he and Cece had such that would let them into the grounds of Sandersfield House and the estate. Queen Caroline and Cercle , the company that had basically morphed into a government agency thanks to that wretched Marie of Wied, who clung to the Queen’s side like the most loyal of lapdogs, were very big on protection and security. Thus royal residences were lock up tighter the most secretive of Gênoise banks.

Their keys worked as a convenient way for them, as the two people who lived as mistress and master of the estate to bypass the many layers of security that had been put into place around the Sandersfield Estate. Arthur himself had practically had to fight for the right to possess such a key after he got tired of having to keep up with it. The bracelet, a prototype by Cercle, who he’d been assured were design more fashionable version was annoying to wear, so he often kept it in his pocket.

“Fuck, I think I forgot my key card inside the house.”

Arthur sighed and looked at Cece and gestured to her.

“Could you?”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 5:09 pm
by Great Hyruke
Cece rolled her eyes as the she tapped her window and it lowered it to show her Cercle bracelet key to the scanner. This wasn’t the first time that Arthur had left his own version and he’d thus had to depend on her to get into their own home. There had been the one time when he’d left and forgotten his bracelet and she’d decided not to let him back inside, gaining that she had been asleep, tired from dealing with the baby. It had been funny until he’d burst inside when she’d finally relented and the two of them had gotten into a fight only for Cece to lock herself up in the nursery.

The gates of Sandersfield Estate opened and they pulled in. The driver came to a stop in front of the steps and as Cece was helped out of the car by a footman she looked back at Arthur.

“You know you really should keep track of that thing. Auntie would kill you if she knew that you were so irresponsible.”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 6:38 pm
by Dutch-Empire
“Oh, that would be a Godsend”

Arthur snapped at Cece as he stepped out of the town car. He stepped past her and the footman. Queen Caroline would just love for him to be little more than her niece’s footman, helping her out of car and escorting her to balls, perfect and quiet little eye candy. It was a pity that Arthur had twice as much brains in Just one eighth of his head than Cece had in her entire skull. It should really be him who became King of Great Hyruke and her who acted as consort. No doubt he broke several formal protocols just by walking in front of her, but he was sovereign here at Sandersfield House. The staff, the household, the way everything was run had all been carefully dictated by him personally. He’d been the great designer of the system, and here the Queen’s misandristic rules didn’t apply. He shoved his hands into his pockets. Nope, he really must have left it. It was probably on his dresser. He would make sure to have it for tomorrow.

Scanning his mental schedule as he climbed up the steps to the front door of the house, he tried to remember what it was that he’d set planned for them. He’d planned out all of their next few engagements out for the next eight weeks and now that the holidays were over there were many lined up.

“Don’t forget that we are due to meet with the Derry Rugby Union, the men’s one.”

Arthur rolled is eyes, not for anyone but himself. Only in Hyruke would the men version need to be the qualifier for sports.

“It is for a patron team run training session. It is their last one before the season begins.”

The Princess and Prince of Éirea’s patronage of the Derry team had, of course been Arthur’s idea. Though he was sure that Cece got a kick out of watching the muscular men in short shorts grappling around over a ball. Arthur’s mind let the thought linger for a second longer than he ought to. He froze. A new thought occurred to him. Turning on his heels and glaring down at her, he snapped again.

“Are you cheating on me?”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 7:30 pm
by Great Hyruke
The accusation froze Cece in her track. She looked up at Arthur with wide blue eyes, feeling like a dear, caught in the headlights. She felt her jaw drop, but as her brain formed words and directed them to her mouth, they were caught in her throat, damed like a clogged creek after a family of beavers had moved in. She tried agains to speak, closing her mouth and then opening it, only to then once again close it. Finally, like a wave sweeping over the dam, but not quite breaking it, she managed to say:

“Are you serious right now?”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 7:50 pm
by Dutch-Empire
“Deadly so.”

Arthur took a step down and narrowed his eyes at Cece, cutting past the barricades that in this moment seemed to be only half raised, stuck in formation by him catching her off guard. As he did so he get a small dark pit firm in his stomach. An abyss that opened up like the cracks of the earth were one fell and fell to a point never to return from. For a moment he wanted to retreat, to look away from the Princess of Éirea so that he need not see what was there, but it was too late. He saw it, like an ember hiding in a firepit, trying to leave you to think it’s out but wait to re-ignite.

“Oh my god.”

Arthur felt himself fall into the maw of darkness. His face fell, he bit down on his index finger’s joint, hard.

“It’s true, isn’t it? You are cheating on me. You’re fucking cheating on me.”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 8:25 pm
by Great Hyruke
Cece looked away from Arthur, unable to meet his eyes. She felt cruel. She didn’t want this conversation, not here, not now. She fingered her necklace as she spoke softly. She never would have thought Arthur would snap like this at her. Never point blank accuse her of breaking their vows. Part of her had suspected that if nothing else Arthur would stay true, not out of a particular care for her, but for a general respect of the rules of wedlock. Rules that the future Queen of Great Hyruke has, admittedly treated far more loosely.

“Arthur you are being ridiculous right now.”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 8:34 pm
by Dutch-Empire
“I’m not being ridiculous.”

Arthur hissed at her. He could feel his face turning red with fury, his blood pumping as once again his temper boiled over. There would be no three breaths that could calm him down. He couldn’t believe this. She was making a fool of him. She wasn’t even attempting to deny it. It was true. It was true. It was true.

“Fuck!”

Arthur kicked at empty air and snarled at Cece.

“I am being made into a fucking cuckhold. Who is it? Is it Alicante? I swear to god if it is him. I swear Cece, I’ll kill him. I will kill him.”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 9:14 pm
by Great Hyruke
Recoiling Cece looked back at her husbabd with shock and horror clear in her eyes. Arthur of course would think of Charles, the Duke of Alicante. It was a reasonable, if incorrect deduction. Cece had been in love with Charles before she’d married Arthur, though that had been years before she had actually married Arthur. She and the Duke of Alicante had even dated for a while. But they had parted amicably and now they were just friends, despite Arthur’s protests. Of course there was a politically motivated rivalry between Arthur and Charles, as their mothers had literally hated one another since before they were born.

Cece didn’t want Arthur to think it was Charles, especially not in this state. He might actually go and murder the Duke and cause a war. It wasn’t even him and she refused to let this spiral out of her control. She tried to shift the conversation.

“It’s not Charles. Damn it, Arthur. You want the truth. Yes. I’m having an affair. But why do you even care?”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 9:26 pm
by Dutch-Empire
Arthur threw his arms up into the air. At this point he was screaming. This was too much for him. What had started off as a night that was at least nice, a diplomatic mission that had been successful, had rapidly turned into a horrible disaster and the unraveling of his marriage.

“I am your husband Cece! People like us, affairs aren’t kept secret. They come out. And they have repercussions. Kingdoms and crowns turn on our kind of affairs. And I refuse to be the only damn prince in the world whose wife is off fucking someone. This is not what we do. We are married.”

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 10:01 pm
by Great Hyruke
Cece tossed her hands up. This was it she supposed. She turned around and marched to the town car. She threw open the car door once again and looked back up at her husband. She finally broke down, and letting out a scream.

“Yes, Arthur! We are! To death to us fucking part!”

Cece climbed back into the town car and slammed the door and snapped at the driver to do her job and drive. The town car pulled away from the steps and swung around away from Sandersfield House and back to the gate. The gate opened and they sped away. Cece had no intention of coming back tonight.