A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 746: The Good News and The Bad - Part 7

"Come, Oliver… you can’t… It’s all very well and good to be poetic, but it doesn’t really equate here, does it? There’s no beauty in it, there can’t be," Asabel said, almost firmly.

"What about all those people that you helped with your skills? You’ve been in medicine far longer than politics, haven’t you? I spoke to Verdant about it – your medical past, out of curiosity. For a Princess that could’ve lived a far more sheltered life than you have, you’ve certainly been plunging yourself into the world of blood since early on, haven’t you?" Oliver said.

"Oliver – that’s embarrassing… If you’d have asked me yourself, I would have told you."

"You will not even speak to me because of this thing. I regret speaking it so casually. If I had known how you would react to it, do you think I would have brought it up? If I’d in any way agreed with the ideals of the Church of Claudia in that regard, do you think I could have said it to you with a straight face?" Oliver asked."

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Finally, Asabel seemed to be backed into a corner. Verdant had told him that no man had ever won a woman over with logic, but Oliver was doing his best to try. Though, he supposed, his arguments weren’t entirely founded in logic. There were a good few emotional reaches in there. He was just as prone to them at times as many others.

"No…" Asabel said finally realizing it, "I suppose not."

"Now can you see how what you expect of me can never come to pass?" Oliver asked. "Your ways – all of you – are strange to me. In this, there is no exception. Even if you see that as the honourable path, and you force the position of an honourable man onto me, I won’t abide by it."

"But Oliver, can’t you see how right they are?" Asabel pleaded, tears in her eyes.

From the corner of Oliver’s eye, he could see the difficulty that Lancelot was having in following their conversation. Seeing his mistress so close to full-on tears made him flinch. He reached to stop Oliver, but something made him pause.

"Not at all – I see how right you are, though. I believe in your righteousness. Even you knew yourself, didn’t you? You’re a better woman than most, Asabel. If you had truly believed yourself to be wrong, you’d have turned yourself in," Oliver said.

"I lack the strength… Gods, Oliver, don’t look at me so highly. I cannot. I say it again, that strength is lacking. I do not have what you have. Even in my position, I don’t doubt you would have done what I ask of you," Asabel said.

"Then you too are overestimating me," Oliver said. "If you knew anything about me – anything true, beyond the gossip that has travelled so far – you would not even attempt to hold me as any sort of paragon of goodness."

"I can’t, Oliver… I don’t like where this is going… I cannot have this burden," Asabel said, her eyes misting up even further, the tears threatening to spill at any moment. "Any other time, and I might have been able to accept my fate proudly, with a strong heart… but here and now, in the midst of all of this. Why did you have to see what you shouldn’t have?"

"I’ve seen it, but I won’t do anything but defend it," Oliver said. "Shame it, and you shame me. I say that to you."

"That’s simply not true," Asabel said, sending the tears flying, as she attempted to use her hands to cover her shame from the few retainers that were still remaining – though Lancelot had begun to send them away, to preserve her honour. "There’s no way you could be as tainted as I…"

That brought a smile to Oliver’s lips. A smile that shouldn’t have contained the sort of humour that it did. He had to put a hand over his mouth to contain a laugh. Tainted? How could anyone get more tainted than he? The darkest of all the Dark Gods – Ingolsol himself.

Oliver hadn’t just been cursed by him, he’d conversed with him, and even struck a bargain with him. He used Ingolsol’s fragment just as freely as others used Claudia’s. How could any get more tainted than that?

"You wretch, why are you laughing..?" Lancelot growled, seeing the expression on Oliver’s face.

"You must see, of all people, what she cannot," Oliver said, doing his best to hold down his smile. "She sees me so righteously. You see the opposite. Can you not tell her how wrong she is?"

The knight hesitated, stunned to be given the role of ally in this conversation. The mere fact of helping Oliver Patrick in any endeavour clearly irked him, but when that task was merely to besmirch him, Lancelot could speak without any holds barred. "He makes my skin crawl," Lancelot declared. "I cannot understand why you place such faith in him, my Lady.

Even those close to him seem to acknowledge the animal that he can be at times – I can’t believe that you would attempt to make claims of such purity from him."

"Purity..?" Asabel said. "Is that really what I was saying?"

"You called yourself tainted, and said that none could be as tainted as you," Oliver said. "Who but I? I’m quite comfortable in saying that I should not be sharing the same room as you, Princess. If anyone had the mind and power to stop me, I should have been kept like a dog outside, before I sullied these fine carpets that you nobles walk."

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"You are a noble yourself, though," Asabel said, sadly. "I know you do not see eye to eye with them, but I would not let you degrade yourself, to give them ammunition."

"My Princess," Oliver said. "That is where you are wrong. I do not forsake my weaknesses, my muddiness, and my filth. They are the very qualities that allow me to stand on equal footing with foes that should have crushed me long ago. Good Princess Asabel, if not for your own sake, for the sake of the people around you, against your honour, can you not – if begrudgingly – accept that part of yourself?

No, you need not go that far… Merely forgive yourself the fact that it exists."