The Last Petrova

 I stared at Niklaus. Of course, I wasn't planning on actually killing myself. But I couldn't let him know that. As terrified as I was of what he would do, I couldn't let any hesitant emotions leak through. I had always been good at lying... And now, those skills would be what determined the fate of the crown prince of France.

I dug the tip of the sword into the folds of my thick dress. The sword hadn't even brushed against my skin, and yet Niklaus immediately dropped August to the floor and rushed to my side. He grabbed the handle of my sword and broke it cleanly in two over his knee.

"Get out," he said in a low voice to August, "And never return."

August stared at me. Unlike most royals, August was a noble man, a man who always kept his word. I knew he wasn't planning on leaving without me... And it was going to get him killed.

'Go,' I mouthed, trying to tell him that everything would be alright through my pained smile. Tears poured down August's face as he limped over towards the door. He walked out, and the second he did, Niklaus slammed the door shut, and locked it from the inside.

With August, the temporary burst of bravery I had attained left me. I edged away from Niklaus, who looked like a true monster, now that the moonlight shining in through the small window was casting shadows across his face.

"Stand up," he said. I immediately stood. It didn't even occur to me that, for whatever strange reason it was, he wouldn't physically hurt me. All I could think about right now were the four human hearts Niklaus had ripped out of the French guards' chests. They lined the stone floors in a circular fashion.

Niklaus grabbed my wrist and led me out of my room. "Elijah!" he shouted. I remembered the man who had stopped Niklaus from killing Hazel back at the French castle. I had only met him briefly then, and we hadn't even shared a conversation since.

"Yes, Niklaus, what do you want?" asked Elijah. Even more human hearts lined the ground of the courtyard where Elijah stood.

"What I want," Niklaus said, as he looked around at the bodies littered everywhere, "Is for a watch to be placed on her," he said, pointing a finger at me. "I don't want her anywhere by herself. And, as luck would have it, brother, Rebekah lays in the dining hall with the wooden shaft of a French arrow in her heart, and Kol... Well, I'm off to find him, so here," he said. I stumbled forward and Niklaus pushed me towards his brother.

There was a sound of soft wind, and when I turned around, Niklaus had disappeared. I had yet to figure out what the Mikaelsons were, but based on the three weeks I had spent with them, I had learned they could move at lightning speed, had incredible strength... And judging from how unconcerned Elijah had been when Niklaus had mentioned their sister's death so nonchalantly, I could only assume the Mikaelsons also had the power to return from the dead.

"Tell me, Queen Helena, what exactly happened to make Niklaus call for such drastic measures?" Elijah asked.

"I- I..." I tried to speak, but my voice was stuck. How could I speak, when the corpses of the French knights that had come to save me were so near and plentiful?

"You don't have to fear me," Elijah said, wiping his blood covered hands on a handkerchief. This sentence was so absurd that it caused me to laugh for the first time in weeks.

"You just killed fourteen of the king's most skilled guards- you tore out their hearts without so much as the blink of an eye- and I am to not fear you?" I screamed hysterically.

"You may not understand it, but there is no one else in the world who wishes your safety and wellbeing more than my family and I," Elijah said.

"Then help me understand! Tell me why you hold me hostage, yet refuse to let anything hurt me!" I yelled. Elijah stared at me, and for a moment, I thought I had angered him. During that split second, I realized Elijah did not scare me the same way and Niklaus did. While Niklaus scared me through his sudden bursts of shouts and angered roars, Elijah scared me through his silence. A single second of hesitance from him, and a thousand panicked thoughts rushed through my head.

Elijah sighed. "It's a long story, that which began with your great grandmother one hundred and twenty years ago," he said.

"Katerina Petrova," he began, with a wistful glint in his eyes. "She was an exquisite beauty..." I wondered, from the way he trailed off, if he had been in love with this woman.

"She, as the first Petrova doppelganger to emerge for the first time in centuries, was to be used as a sacrifice to break a curse that had been placed on Niklaus. But she ran away, and destroyed all hope for my brother when she took a drastic step none of us dreamed she would take. We had lost... Or so we thought. For you see, unlike what we had originally thought, Katerina wasn't the last member of the Petrova bloodline... You are."