Chapter 205 - 203: The Whispers.

Chapter 205: Chapter 203: The Whispers.

Xena has heard a rumor.

​Well, she’s heard many rumours –it comes with the territory and the weight of a future crown –but this one in particular she has been meaning to investigate for days.

This has proved quite the difficult task, however, what with her father insisting on filling her schedule with last minute breakfasts, afternoon teas, and farewells with their many guests before they head off on their long journeys home.

Some of them are pleasant, but some are terribly boring.

​As the Crown Princess she knows it’s expected that she attend, but there have been so many of these little gatherings where she may as well not have.

The lords defer to her father, and the ladies speak largely only when spoken to, and they rarely are.

She carries herself as she should and as she’s expected to, but there’s only so much she can stand being talked around.

​It’s quite exhausting, pretending it doesn’t bother her.

She’s been so careful and so proper but she suspects her father knows; suspects it’s the only reason he keeps agreeing to all of these little social events, since he finds them just as tiresome.

​What her mother ever saw in him, she’ll never know.

​The good news is that if she’s been so tied up with their guests that she hasn’t had a moment to confirm such rumours with her own eyes, then neither has her father.

Usually she wouldn’t bother; the whispers in the castle are very good and rarely come from nothing, and she could have asked Vogrid to look into them, but when they revolve around her cousin, and for once not for the wrong reasons, well, who can blame her for paying special attention?

​Especially now. Especially after what she’d seen at the tournament.

​She wishes her handmaidens would walk just a little faster.

Princesses don’t rush , but she’s sure that no one would bat an eyelid if she were to move with a bit more purpose.

She likes to think she possesses more patience than her father, but the last few days spent largely in his company have left her with little to spare, and it takes a considerable amount of willpower not to race ahead of her handmaidens.

​It wouldn’t be becoming of the royal family, to be caught running through the castle halls.

​As if on cue, the corridor she’s in descends into anarchy.

​It starts as a thick rumbling, like the far off sound of thunder building before a storm hits, and then with an almighty crash a flurry of limbs comes barreling down the hall at high speed.

The wandering guards barely have time to call out before they’re bodily flung aside, armour clattering on stone as they’re sent sprawling.

Shrieks go up as lords whisk their ladies out of the warpath, and food and silverware goes flying every which way as servants flatten themselves back against the walls to avoid the fray.

​Dimly, Xena is able to pick out two voices, rising up above the cacophony of shrieks and trays and expensive decor clattering off the walls and to the floor.

​" Get off me !"

​" You get off me!"

Her handmaidens scream as the tangle of bodies passes them by, and Xena belatedly realises just who this tempest is made of is as her cousin goes careening wildly out of the whirlwind straight into a decorative rack of armour, bodily shoved by none other than his betrothed.

​Both Loac and the armour go flying, and the noise the metalwork makes as it hits the stone in its many pieces is deafening .

Loac is quick to his feet though, scrabbling around on the loose bits of armour and even hurling a piece at the back of Khobi’s head as he goes.

It cracks him clean between the shoulder blades and he staggers just long enough for Loac to close the gap and yank him back by his shirt.

The agonising squeal of tearing fabric joins the commotion, and Khobi lurches backwards off balance as Loac flings himself on and past him.

​" Hey, no fair! "

​Loac charges on without breaking stride and hits the stairs first, taking off two steps ahead of Khobi.

He breaks his fall with a roll, and smoothly gathers himself to his feet in one fluid motion.

​Khobi follows a beat later, but whiffs the landing, hitting the ground awkwardly and spilling across the floor in an ungainly heap.

For a terrifying moment it looks like he won’t get up again, but then, heaving, he drags himself back to his feet.

​Loac breaks stride at the end of the hallway just long enough to gloat, and then he’s off again; Khobi in hot pursuit.

​As suddenly as it blew in, the storm subsides, and the decimated hallway descends into a stupefied silence.

​One of the hanging tapestries flutters to the ground, torn right from its fastenings.

​Servants and nobles alike gape at the carnage.

​Xena just blinks. Princesses don’t gape. Although honestly at this point she wishes she could.

​The corridor looks like its been hit by a small but particularly destructive tornado.

Loac and Khobi have left proper mayhem in their wake; food, broken pottery and plaster have spilled, shattered or scattered across the stone and several of the wall hangings –those that are still on the walls at all –are askew, or pathetically dangling by a thread.

​It’s been a while since Khobi has rampaged through the castle, but even for him this level of destruction is unprecedented.

​Even more so for Loac .

​Another moment passes in silence.

The servants are the first to shake off the shock, and motion returns to the hall as they diligently swoop in to gather up the debris like this sort of madness is commonplace.

The nobles are slower to recover, and as much as they love to talk about the shortcomings of her cousin and the chaos of Khobi Frost, even they don’t seem to know what quite to make of what they’ve witnessed.

Xena is sure though, that the whispers will come.

​They always do.