from the bottom to the top

“Last week you complained about the $100 I spent on conditioner, be consistent for once in your life, darling.” 

“Perhaps if you bought a conditioner that worked, I wouldn’t complain.” Hand snaking to the nape of her neck, finding purchase in the dark waves there, he shook his head. “For as dry and brittle as it is, you’d think you’d never even heard of it.”

“You’ve still yet to kill me, even after all your threats.” Growing up royal, and with sisters in the same nursery as her, Claudia had never had a normal concept of personal space. A good thing when one’s husband was a man who routinely invaded the area of her person. Neither of them was very good at leaving the other alone. “Tell me, when you do take my head will you bury it with me or put it up for show?” She pushed his dampened curls away from his face. “I hope you put it up for show, I wouldn’t want pretenders claiming to be me running about.” Soberer than he, but just as affected by their closeness, she couldn’t help it as she closed the gap between them even more. They were a breath away from touching now, breath as intermingled as both their damned souls. “Or you could just have my tongue ripped out.” She wet the skin of her lips deliberately. “But we both know just how much you might regret that if it were to happen.” Her fingers grasped his hair tightly. “Just know that if you give the order concerning my family that I will stick a knife in you, husband.”

“I suppose you have some uses.” They were breathing each other’s air, his skin tingling where her breath touched it. His hand found its way around her waist, settling at the base of her spine and pulling her even closer, pressing themselves together despite the layers of fabric. “It would look so lovely on a pike, don’t you think?” He swallowed hard. “Staying there until you rot, letting the crows take your eyes.” His teeth skimmed his bottom lip, eyes darting to her own mouth. “There could still be many uses for you without a tongue. It might even make you charming, to be able to be in your presence without your mindless shrill babble.” The pressure of her hand in his hair caused him to retaliate, pushing his head towards hers instead. His face closer to hers than ever, he pressed his lips to hers, ending in a sharp bite upon her lip. “You wouldn’t dare, darling. For what is one of your cousins, when I have given you all you now have. In fact, I might now rid us of one of them simply because I can.”

“There’s a lot of things I should care about, but don’t. This doesn’t feature very high on the list.” Her wrist in his, an accustomed position that caused her no discomfort. It was for the sake of pride that she gave a half halted effort to tug the appendage away from its prison. Within all of a moment, her other hand had come up to swat at him too. “For someone as clever as you are, it would be smarter to be more open to change. My hair looks better than yours anyway.”

He scoffed at her words. “I am open to change, just not changes you make.” His hand gripped hers, nails scratching her pale skin. “Seeing as you don’t seem to know what conditioner is, there’s no way that mop you call a hair could look better than mine.”

“Just because you don’t have your hair styled, and instead leave it to look like a mess constantly.” She batted at his hands, harder than she would with most, but still mostly gentle by their standards. “It’s a good job that I don’t care what you think.” 

“Well you should.” His hand grasped her wrist, stopping her swatting and keeping her from moving away all in one. “It looks a mess.”

“I’ll get extensions if you pay for extensions.” As if he’d do that, especially if she showed him the cost of the only extensions she’d tolerate in her hair. Johannes thought he was a genius, but manipulating him was as easy as breathing for Claudia. “Will you stop that? You’re messing up the style.”

“There wasn’t a style to begin with. I had nothing to mess up.” Even as he spoke his hands refused to move from her waves. “I can’t get over how stupid it looks.”

“Stop, you’re making me blush. It’s so cute that you think I was seriously asking for your opinion. Do you want to touch it?”

“No. You should get extensions because it looks gross.” Despite his words his hand reached out, fingertips playing with the ends of her hair.

“Perhaps I would,” she stated boldly. A bare faced and bald headed lie, it tasted scarcely better than the wine that they both had poured over them. She tightened her grip on the cross at his comment, palm pressing enough that she’d have an indent later. It had been an unthinking movement, reaching for it, one of habit and not of belief. Something comforting in the feel of it against her touch. Stupid. Claudia just kept slipping tonight. “How much to atone for your blasphemy?” She looked up at him through damp and sticky eyelashes, unmoving. He was damned her husband, for more things than just this, but Claudia was likely damned too. There would be no tender judgement for her, of that she was sure, and she had pride enough that she would never pay a man to forgive her of her multitude of sins. “Mayhaps you should look for that knife sooner rather than later.” She reached with her free hand to caress his face, her nails allowed to scrape along his skin unmercifully. “The further away he is from you, the easier for my family to find ways into his life. It doesn’t matter, in the end, if I don’t see him, what matters is he looks more favourably on my family than yours. I am willing to play the long game, it’s the one I’m best at.“

“I will pay for blasphemy when I am dead.” His hand around hers around a cross; if this was blasphemy he would gladly atone later. She looked nothing a queen in that second, as he was sure he looked none a king. “Which shall be long after you, as treason is a deadly crime.” He lent in so close he could feel her breath. If he weren’t half drunk already, he would be now. She was an intoxicating woman. “I would stop with your threats, before you find yourself without a head.” It took all he had not to lean into her touch, to grin at her claws. His wife was no gentle woman, but a force of nature. “Your family is at its end, Claudia. I can ruin what is left with a single order. You ought not to use your words so freely.”

“You’re a usurper, who won the throne through treachery and whose paranoia is forever proof that what is given can be taken away.” Not that the throne being taken from them was ever what Claudia wanted. She’d worked actively against such a thing happening. His fall would spell hers, it would spell the exiles or deaths of her children. And in the end, it would be the latter because it would be only a fool that allowed a child of her’s or her husband to survive as an enemy. Her lips twitched momentarily into what might have been a smile, a grimace in actuality, but was just a brief flash of teeth and lips. Unmoving except this in the face of his temper. “No, I suppose a heart does not go far in this world.” She unclenched a hand to play at the bejewelled cross around her throat. “But neither do all monsters, in the end, in fact, so many of them fall because of a knife in the back. Though you need not worry about such a thing from me until Maximillian is grown.”

“I might be a usurper, but I am no child murderer. Or would you rather still be under the reign of the darling uncle that killed your brother?” His glare was strong, but Claudia was used to it; petty arguments were common place, as were fights that sent items flying across rooms. He wondered how this one would end. “That goes no further than a heart here.” He nodded his head to her hand. There was no god in this place, she ought to now that by now. It took less than a blink of an eye for Johannes to move from where he reclined in his chair, to leaning over her, one hand wrapped around hers. “There is a reason Johannes spends so little time with you, and right now, you are doing nothing but amplifying it. I will gladly send him to the furthest castle from Vienna; and you will see him less than ever.”