"You crazy bitch. You would kill us both."[break][break]
His fists grabbed her long blonde hair, dragging her along the floor to her bedroom. The smell of smoke and ash still burned his eyes, filling his nostrils with every inhale of breath as his wife's unsettling laughter followed his every step.[break][break]
All of the manor was empty, save for them. His rage had banished all others from the premises.[break][break]
"What's wrong, Edouard?" Elisabeth taunted, grinning up at him even as he yanked her upright.
"I thought you liked fire."[break][break]
His Emboar let out a low, menacing growl at the woman's predatory smile. It could sense his master's black mood a little too well; the two had synced in that way, forming an understanding that somehow Édouard and his wife had never known.[break][break]
'His wife.' Was she even that anymore? The woman in front of him was a stranger, now.[break][break]
"Is this a game to you, Lisa?" he snarled, shoving her against the wall so that bruises blossomed unseen all along her back. The mortar shuddered with their combined weight, and another maddening laugh bubbled out of his wife's throat. It enraged him.
"How many people might have died, had your little stunt succeeded?"[break][break]
How had she gotten hold of any means of fire at
all? The only Pokemon in her possession, to his knowing, was the Roselia he'd gifted her. None of the servants would be foolish enough to leave matches in her reach. None of his Emboar would ever listen to her orders over his.[break][break]
Yet somehow, the entire west wing of the manor had burned down at her bidding.[break][break]
"But I'm not good for much anything, am I?" Elisabeth replied mockingly, her voice taking on a sing-song tenor.
"You give me an awful lot of power for a mad woman, you know."[break][break]
His fist tightened on her throat, stifling her manic laughter. Still, the defiant gleam never left her emerald gaze. It terrified him, the way he couldn't recognize himself anymore in her eyes.[break][break]
"Are you going to kill me?" Elisabeth managed to whisper, and only this made his hand slacken its hold. Given breath once more, she sneered up at her husband, goading him onwards.
"Go ahead. Put us both out of our misery, then."[break][break]
Was that what she wanted? Was that the only future she believed they could know? It defied sense and reason.[break][break]
Abruptly he tossed her to the floor; she coughed as her hands reached for her throat, gasping for lungfuls of air. He waited for the fear to creep into her expression, as it always had before, rendering her silent and docile as she ought to be in his presence.[break][break]
Instead, that incessant laughter returned in all its cruel cadence, taunting as she grinned up at him.[break][break]
"Weak little man," she hissed out, all bared fangs.
"You can't even kill me properly. What, are you afraid of being the monster that you are?"[break][break]
When had she turned into this vicious harpy, needling him at every turn? He'd never
believed her to be mad, at first; it had been a carefully curated white lie, something to appease the press while they bided their time for her return to society. She'd given him no choice, when she'd accused him of such crimes so brazenly.[break][break]
He had never imagined it would provoke her to arson.[break][break]
Had she forgotten how to fear him? Had he, in fact, become weak in his attempts to win back her affections?[break][break]
"No son of mine will be called weak."
[break]
"Shall we play with fire, then?" Édouard roared, a boot holding her supine form flat against the tile. He could feel the laughter shivering through her, throwing her into a fit of hysteria.
"Never forget that I give you only what you ask for, Lisa. Nothing more and nothing less."[break][break]
His Emboar's curled first was set ablaze with a fiery tincture, glowing through a spectrum of golds, reds, and blues as it stomped forward at its master's call. Elisabeth didn't quiver or tremble at its approach; she didn't beg for her husband's forgiveness; she did nothing but
laugh, her sharp eyes daring him to do what she didn't believe he could.[break][break]
"Apologize," he warned, the thunder of his baritone a threat as he knelt down to face her.
"You will not win this war against me. One day, you'll realize that surrender is your only path to happiness."[break][break]
"Kill me," she dared him instead, and spit in his eye.[break][break]
This was what he told himself:
She had asked for this.
She had forced his hand.
She had been the one to reject his kindness, only accepting cruelty.[break][break]
If she only believed him capable of evil, then so be it.[break][break]
Pain forced even the strongest wills to break. It had broken Édouard in the face of war. It had broken his mother's sneering derision at the hands of his father.[break][break]
And it broke Elisabeth, now, as her cackling laughter gave way to screams that pierced the entirety of the manor in their inhuman decibel, tears streaming down her cheeks as he held her writhing body in place. The fear he'd so desired to invoke in her returned to her emerald eyes as she convulsed in agony, and for a moment she seemed to be ten years younger, frightened at the discovery that the man she loved had learned only how to hate her.[break][break]
The stench of burning flesh flooded all of his senses as the Emboar finally relinquished its grip on her thigh, branding his wife's skin where only he -- or those that defied his ownership of her -- might truly know her. The result was twisted, red and raw; it sickened him to stare upon the warped flesh for too long.[break][break]
Incapable of speech, Elisabeth's earlier defiance diminished into nothingness she collapsed into a fit of pathetic, unintelligible sobs. Édouard stared down at the pitiful form of his broken wife in silence, disgusted as he stepped over her.[break][break]
"You chose to suffer," he reminded her, moving to depart her room.
"I'm merely giving you the punishment you asked me for. I take no pleasure in it, Lisa, despite what you choose to believe."[break][break]
The physician came to tend to a mentally unwell woman who had managed to get her hand on matches. He was paid for his discretion. He was given reason to sympathize with the shattered woman whose burn he tended, for she was not in her right mind.[break][break]
Surely
this would remind her of her place, Édouard thought to himself. Surely
this would return things to the way they ought to be.[break][break]
But the hate rekindled in her, given all the more fuel for its flames.