As I drift off into the warm dark space your mind creates for you when it simply cannot take anymore, I begin to remember a different time. The deeper I fell into this pain free portal, the more I seemed to remember.
One of my earliest memories was being on the Queen's lap, I remember sitting there while she held me and passed judgement. She wore the longest necklaces so I'd entertain myself by playing with those while she kept me on her knees. I remember meeting all sorts of creatures of the court, goblins, cyclops, redcaps, and they were my friends, or I thought they were. They were so very kind to me unlike the seelie court I rarely seen. The seelies, even at my young age, were not to be trusted. While at first they'd compliment the Queen on her adopted off spring, they'd quietly gossip behind her back about how she stole me from the seelie court. Even when I did not know what they meant, I knew to be ashamed of myself and who I was.
I avoided the courts as much as possible as I grew older. There was a side of the Queen there that I did not care for when she was on that throne. While in private, she was truly a mother to me, warm and caring, once she put on her crown and sat in her court, all traces of humanity left her. She tried to interest me in the politics but I'd prefer to be elsewhere when she passed her judgements. As the only female fae child in the court, I always had a group of guards with me, and nothing gave me greater pleasure then being able to escape them. Even at a young age, I was able to evade them. I found out while my breasts were barely budding that I could pull and call shadows to my side. I'd cloak myself in them, hide things from others in them, use them to travel so I could get away from the guards. However, once I was hiding behind the Queen's throne, and seen the punishment she administered to the guard who lost me and I quickly lost my taste for hiding. From that day until I left for the trials, I made sure my guards could keep an eye on me at all times. Some I were fond of, some I did not care for but I always kept my opinions to myself. My foster mother had a taste for the whip and poison to punish her contingent of guards. They were all pure Fae so they were more or less immortal but the pain I witnessed her inflict upon them troubled me deeply.
Once during a feast she hosted for the Winter Solstice, I feel like I seen her cruelty hit new depths. She was already irritated with me, my complaining about my gown, my tiara, my jewels. I found them pretty but impractical. She was upset that I thought she'd let anything disrupt her feast and she had spent a lot on my clothing. So I was pouting while I sat at her left hand, her oldest, most loyal guard at her right as her escort for the evening. I remember a king of one of the lesser courts was trying to bargain with her for my hand for his oldest son who was old enough to be my father. I was not old enough for marriage and the Queen spoke of a being that I was already promised to. The king became aggressive and begin to make insinuations about how the Queen would lose her court by not using me to cement alliances, the wine at the table making him much braver than he should have been.
With a gesture toward her escort, she leaned back and simply smiled at the King. That expression terrified me more than anything else she would have done. The smile lacked any warmth, any happiness. She looked like she was carved from the same marble as the statues in our gardens. The guard stood up and called the others to him. They surrounded the King and his son, binding them with iron chains that she reserved for her more powerful enemies. Seeing their skin begin to smoke, I started to excuse myself, I had no taste for her torture, but with a look, she pinned me to my chair.
Over the next several hours, she peeled the father's flesh from his body and made his son wear it, she then would use the whip on them both. Once she was tired, she summoned the redcaps to come lap their blood which they did with a sickening eagerness. Finally, her lead guard suggested she let the son live as a cautionary tale to others who dare question her authority to which she reluctantly agreed. They let the son out of his chains, but made him sit next to me while she finished with his father. His eyes were wide, his expression making him appear so much younger than he was. Under the table I reached for his hand, unable to help but offer him a comforting touch. The moment my flesh touched his, his wounds begin to pour blood, causing him to shriek and jump back, knocking his chair over, pointing at me screaming that I was trying to kill him. He then lunged at me grabbing the knife off of the table from in front of me, and I screamed, throwing my hands up in defense, crying out in pain as his knife slid across my wrist, causing my blood to spurt out.
In the next moments, a young, newer guard to my Queen's grouping, leaped over the table and drove his head into the prince's stomach, knocking him backward and on his rear end. He then snatched off his scarf and made his way to me, wrapping my wrist and summoning a healer. My entire body was shaking as I stood there, feeling a stirring in my blood that was like a kettle getting ready to boil over. My breaths grew shallower, my eyes still on my attacker, for the first time in my life wanting to lash out, wanting to hurt someone, feeling the urge coiling in my stomach like a snake ready to strike. With a furious growl, I took a single step toward the prince and extended my hand toward him, my own blood crawling along my arm then rushed to my fingertips, exploding toward him. The blood twisted like thorns and wrapped around the prince's throat, shadows clamoring over one another to cover his body, the combination of both causing the sound of tearing flesh to fill the hall, his shrieks being drowned out by the sound of the shadows feasting on his blood, his skin, ripping his limbs apart.
It wasn't long until what remained of the prince was left on the floor, and I stood there, still trembling but feeling a slight kindred to my foster mother for the first time in my life. The shadows dispersed, pleased with their feast as I looked around, seeking out the one person I knew would not be disgusted by my actions, and I found her, paused over the father, her expression torn between amusement at my antics and anger at upstaging her. "You," she barked at the guard who was still holding my wrist, his eyes the size of small saucers, almost stinking of fear. "Take my foster daughter to her room so she can have her wounds attended to and clean up. Athilephila!" she looked back at the father, than to me. "Once you are tended to and clean, come see me in my bedchambers." She then turned her attention back to her own victim, and the guard very gently gripped my arm, directing me back to the chambers where I lived.
After I was cleaned up and my wound sufficiently healed, I made my way to her bedchamber, slightly dreading the scene I'd see there. Sure enough, her head guard was naked on the bed, sprawled out looking sleepy. I averted my eyes. My foster mother was strangely possessive of her bedmates and I don't even think I would have gotten away with looking at someone she was sleeping with.
"Athilephila," my foster mother crooned, and perched on the edge of her bed, her own body barely covered by the thin robe she wore. "How old are you now child?"
With a tired lift of my shoulders I answered, "I think I passed fifteen years this past winter,"
She sighed and stood up, nodding slowly, "Then it is time to send you to train for the trials," she muttered looking almost sad as she moved toward me and grasped my chin in her fingers, forcing me to look up at her, my head only coming up to her chest. "I had hoped to keep you with me a little longer since we are unsure of your powers but tonight... tonight can't happen again." She then pushed my head backwards, causing me to stumble back and almost fall. "The trials?" I was so confused, was I being punished? Rewarded?
"The Trials," she repeated and sighed as she perched back on her bed, reaching over to grip her guard's thigh. "You need to be trained so things like tonight do not happen again." She attempted to dismiss me but I stood there, refusing to leave without answers. "What are the trials, foster mother?" I asked her, my voice as icy as hers was at dinner.
"Child you do not outrank me even here," She stood up suddenly, and marched back over to me, grasping my throat with her fingers and squeezing as she yanked me closer. "Perhaps I should have drowned you so you could have joined your parents..."
Well tonight was having a lot of first so I decided to add a new one. "And what of this individual that you promised me to? I seen fear in your eyes tonight when you mentioned them." I sounded strangled and prepared for her to rip my throat out. I was not prepared for her to let go of me and step back, looking as shocked as her guard was with my retort. She quickly recovered and called for another guard to take me back to my room, "You'll find out tomorrow, child." she spat out, and I let the other guard drag me out of her room.
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