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She drops back, and you arrange your features to convey a more carefully conciliatory expression. It is not that her presence intimidates you—no, never!—but it would be better if she considers you friend, rather than foe. You would prefer that she chooses the former, yet the withering hostility in her voice gives you some doubts. “Let me tell you a secret, dove,” Confutatis hisses, and you work to keep your face expressionless. Despite your desire to net a most valuable ally, you will not have her think you some weak thing. “The Regime will come to rule Helovia," she breathes, and you allow the most fleeting knowing glance: a split second of steady eye contact. Indeed it will, your gaze seems to say. After all, you were the one who foretold it not five minutes ago, were you not? With her at its helm, this Regime is bound to rise—you can see it, see it in the way she walks, hear it in the way she talks. The passion in her voice is unmistakable. Confutatis nearly caresses the name of the Regime, that much is true.
"Stay with us,” she continues, “and you will rise high among our ranks; but before you join willingly let it be known that the Regime is to be kept secret, to be withheld from the common populace. We will strike in silence, shadows appearing from sunlight, when they have been lulled into security. Take up the Crown, Sheba, with us; to find a family and eventually a home.” Ah, you think: secrets. Your lips, of their own accord, very nearly turn up in delight—yes, secrets, this is a trade with which you are familiar. Information is a valuable commodity, you have discovered, and you store away this tidbit in the corner of your brain. Perhaps you will need it later; perhaps not, but if there is one thing you’ve learned, it is always better safe than sorry.
A fierce grin (more of a grotesque leer than anything else, you think to yourself) is plastered across that skull mask, and just when you think that the smile cannot stretch any wider, cannot grow more foreboding, it does. “But,” she adds, voice dangerously low, “traitors to the crown will not be tolerated.” The scarred lips murmur it lightly enough, but the yellow eye seems to stare straight into your soul, burning a hole in your ivory forehead. Let her stare, you parry mentally. If it is your soul she seeks to see, she will not find anything there anyway.
So, you lower your delicate head in submission, the picture of a humble follower, and two words drip from your velvet tongue as you signify your intentions:
“I accept.”
@[Confutatis]: I think we can call this thread done! Would you like to do another in the wilds somewhere so that she can give Sheba instructions?
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I Came in Like a Wrecking Ball [Regime]
