I fiddled with the ring, unsure of what to do. The sapphire gleamed faintly in the light, a gem cut perfectly by the lasers I’d designed myself. My body heaved breathlessly.
She had protested so hard when I threatened to take the ring from her. Never had I seen her so frightened when I’d spotted the tacky thing on her hand… I thought surely it must be the true source of her power. The key to vanquishing her forever and taking the world for myself. Like the rest of her costume, it had been a brilliant blue when I took it, and the gem shaped like a Valentine heart. A ring suiting the foolish superheroine who had sworn to defeat me, a ring that represented hopes and dreams and all of the childish notions of justice and equity for which she claimed to stand.
But in the moment I’d removed it from her, it had returned to its true form. A form I couldn’t help but recognize immediately… and taking advantage of my sudden state of shock, she’d broken free of her trap and wrestled me to the ground, seizing it back from me. I managed to escape, avoiding capture, but the damage to my soul had been done…
Now here I sat in my home… my “real” home. My wife’s engagement ring, the one-of-a-kind band I’d crafted myself with the promise of making a better life for the both of us, sat here in my hand. Her startling blue eyes had lit up so brightly when I bowed my knee all those years ago that the gem dulled in comparison.
The ring that Henrietta Carmen gave Azura Kilner the day she’d proposed… and the ring that the Crimson Queen had briefly stolen from Cerulean Fire’s fingers this morning.
How could this be? I pleaded with myself again. The logic could only go in one direction, and yet the idea that my archnemesis and the love of my life could be one and the same shattered my very perception of reality. But it explained so much… why Azura kept such strange hours as I did, why she and I would disagree so strongly when discussing the truths of the world… why I could never find Cerulean Fire’s true identity before, why she always seemed to know my every move and I hers.
I only ever did this to survive. To teach the world a lesson, that my existence was not one of shame. To teach the world that they would be sorry they ever hurt me, or my wife. To do to them what they did to me, and revel in it.
My gods, she’d saved them from me. The people who would sooner see her dead for who we are than ever accept her, and she still saved them.
Would she hate me if she knew? Would she end us? End everything?
Would she… would she save me, if she knew? Save me from myself?
“Hen?” called a quiet voice, and I looked up from my reverie. Azura stood in the hallway, rubbing her eyes. “What are you doing up at this hour?”
“Just… thinking about when I proposed,” I said, which was half-true. I was used to telling her things that were half-true by now, but now I realized she probably was used to the same.
She smiled, sleepily, and came to sit next to me, admiring the ring. “It’s my most treasured memory,” she replied. “I remember it like it was yesterday. You were so nervous… I’d never seen you so flustered in my life before.”
“Yeah…” I sighed. “Until then I’d never been nervous about anything so much in my life.”
She laid her head on mine, her golden curls drifting across my back. I felt my stomach drop.
“Azura?” I asked. “Would you ever hate me?”
She blinked. “Why would you even ask that?” A tremble of concern passed under her voice.
“I mean… if you found out I… hurt someone. Or if I hurt you. Would you hate me?” I asked, even more quietly.
She sighed. “I know you feel angry, Henni. I know you still hurt from what your parents did… and the foster system, and the doctors. I know you live with that hurt every day. I know we don’t see eye to eye all the time. But I love you, and I will always love you. You are my rose in a sea of thorns.”
“But what if… I was a thorn?”
“Then I would water you until you bloomed again,” she whispered sweetly, and kissed me on the cheek. I felt my heart jump in my breasts.
She gently slipped the ring from my hands, turning it over in her fingers. “This ring is your promise to me… that no matter what, in our darkest hours, we’d be there for each other. I feel strong with it. I know that you would never hurt me intentionally.”
I thought about the times I’ve left Cerulean Fire beaten and burned, and how Azura would be home with bandages saying she’d scalded herself on a coffee pot at work. The times that I trapped Cerulean Fire in my machinations of death only for her to break free at the last possible moment, and how those nights Azura would grip me so tightly and tell me she just wanted to feel me close to her, like she was scared she’d never be able to again.
I swallowed. “Y-you’re right. I could… I could never hurt you.”
She kissed me again. “C'mon. Let’s go to bed.” And she led me to our bedroom, awash with the violet tint of night. I followed.
Hiding a burning crimson face, stained with cerulean tears.
