Once they were finally left alone, Helga and Markus finally had a chance to talk without the fear of being overheard. Even so, with the Valkyrie’s daughter possibly arriving any time soon, Helga wanted their conversation to be as brief as possible. Yet betraying her own rationale, she couldn’t help her curiosity as Markus brought the cup of coffee to his burning lips.
"Can you still taste it?" She asked, her eyes glued at his lips.
"What?" Mumbling in confusion he glanced over to the Valkyrie before following her gaze and figuring out what she meant. "Faintly yes, but like most of my bodily function, this little joy is also being taken away from me."
"I can’t imagine what it must be like living in that prison of a body..." Leaning forward, Helga set her cup aside as it pained her to drink in front of him.
"However," glancing back up, she folded her hands over her knees and glared into his burning eyes. "You’ve always been a knight–"
"Not a knight but a servant, passed from one master to the other," putting his cup down at the handrest, Markus took a deep breath and let the weight on his shoulder fall. "I will serve the current king of Athenia until his mortal time is over, but then I will serve no king. Past that, I simply wish to die."
A grim silence descended on the two. Helga wanted to fault him for seeking his own death, but she couldn’t. How could she? After all, the only reason she was alive was to raise her daughters, and after that? Perhaps she would wish for the same.
"I doubt there’s anyone who can kill us around though–" Halfway through her sentence, Helga saw a grim longing in Markus’s eyes. It was a request, one she couldn’t grant; not without killing herself alongside him. Holding a stern, quivering finger at his face, she barked at him in anger. "Don’t you fucking dare put that on me!
I-I’ve already enough people in my life, and there’s no way in the nine hells you’ll manage to convince me to kill you in battle!"
Taking off her clothes, she turned in front of the mirror to get a look at her scarred back. Carved with the names of her friends, her lovers, even those who’d tried to enslave her, they were all there with her as a mix of good and bad. Yet it lacked the name of her husband, the only one whom she carried not on her skin but in her heart.
"I don’t want to carve your name on my body, you idiot. Enough people have treated me like a canvas including myself, but that has to stop, right?" Unsure for the first time in the longest time, Helga sat down on the bed; her body still bare.
She tried to think of ways to get her conversation with Markus out of her head, and eventually, she landed on one, but it wasn’t exactly something she was fond of trying just yet.
’The portrait of that boy and the elf should still be in my bathroom...’ Glancing through the open door to her bathroom, she picked herself up and decided to take a warm bath before indulging into anything that would numb her mind. However, for her that didn’t include not touching the stashed bottles of wine hiding in the top compartment of her kitchen. Find more adventures on novelhall.Côm
Right as she got one of them in her hand, she could hear her daughters arriving at the door. In a rush, she quickly slipped into the bathroom, both to hide the fact that she was walking around naked as well as the bottle of wine in her hand.
"MOMMM!" The girls cried as they entered, their voices all cheery.
"I’m in the bathroom! You two don’t make a ruckus, and go get changed in your rooms!" Announcing that order, she let her body fall to the floor. Once down on her butt, she stared at the bottle before uncorking it. After just a few gulps, she could feel her chest burning. To herself and let the feeling simmer, she moved under the shower and let the water rain down on her body.
’Speaking of death, I wonder how long I’ll have to live for my daughter too...’ The thought was grim, but her drunken state didn’t stop her from exploring it.
Deep in thought wondering when she should die, the Valkyrie drank and drank until she fell asleep in the cramped bathtub. By the time she would awake, her daughters would’ve already gone out playing, giving her the freedom to get a change of clothes without having to walk nude in front of them. But before that, the paintings, she would move them to her bedroom for better access at nights.