by Natasha Nemyre

Created on: April 05, 2009

I watched as my Queen sat down heavily upon the throne. She looked for all the world lost and broken, a mere girl crushed and betrayed. Yet beneath my very gaze, a transformation began to take place. As she again become aware of herself and her surrounds, she pulled herself up, erect upon the gilded throne. She still looked a mere child, but now a child Queen.

"So they want a ruthless and virginal queen, do they, Titus." It was not a question. The deep sadness in her voice broke my heart. "Then that is what they shall have." She signaled for her lady-in-waiting to bring her makeup. I gazed on despairingly as she applied her makeup with her own hand, skillfully and artistically. When she had finished she looked like a porcelain figure, too perfect to possibly be real. As she gazed at her reflection in the mirror, I saw her luminous green eyes glaze over and fill with tears. She clearly did not recognize herself in the inhuman features that stared out of the looking glass. As for myself, the only thing that I could recognize her by were her eyes, they still shone brightly with intelligence and sincerity. Had I then any notion of the further change that would overcome her in the following hour, I would never have let my eyes leave hers. Returning my gaze reflected in the mirror, she looked piercingly into my eyes as three tears slowly broke the damn of her eyelids and rolled forlornly down her ashen cheeks.

"Three tears." It was no more than a guttural whisper and yet those two words held within them a world of meaning. "Three tears," she repeated, "is all I shall ever shed for him." I did not doubt her words. "I shall do what neither Queen Kleopatra with Antony nor Alexander the Great with Hephaistion could. I will watch the man whom I love most in this world die, and by my own decree, no less. Yet I shall neither pine nor mourn. I will live and not merely for a week or even a handful of years. I shall not wallow in sorrow nor seek to numb my grief with drink and debauchery. No, I will live until I am old and grey and time takes me. Quinn will not be my downfall." In all of her twenty-one years I had never heard such hardness in her voice. Yet what disturbed me most about her declaration was not the impassive resolve with which she spoke of her lover's death; it was the detachment in her voice and in her words when she spoke of Alexander and Kleopatra. I had never known her to be anything but adoring and emulative towards these two bygone rulers. Now, however,

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