Sweet belladona

Chapter 1

I looked down at my own attire and it was a ragged black faded out dress that had rips at every edge. My hair was long and messed hanging past my back almost touching my thighs. I was  a mess. I did not fit in with all these people. I looked like I was dragged out of the darkest pits of hell, or maybe I was.

I didn't complain, nor did I scream as they pulled me against my will. My feet could not stand, I was not used to standing, my body was weak and I dared not complain.

They threw me onto the ground and I fell on my knees with my hands on the ground and my head lowered.

"Alas we meet, traitor." It was a powerful mans voice. He spat out each word in disdain and I felt my skin jitter at the sound of his voice. It was a first hearing hatred melded into words. Or maybe I had heard it before but my memory would not serve me correctly to remember a single thing.

I did not speak, I felt like my lips had been sewn shout, all I managed to do was stare at the sparkling marbling floors that reflected my reflection back to me. I was a mess, staring back at me was a face I did not recognize. Tangled raven black hair fell down my face and my skin was pale, so pale that my shocking blue eyes seemed out of place. I felt like a stranger to myself.

"Look up, traitor and acknowledge your emperor." One of the guards besides me hissed but I could not seem to look up. Iwas terrified, scared and out of place. Why did they keep calling me traitor and what was my crime?

I didn't lift my face up but I felt it moving up by a force of some kind until I was staring at a man dressed in a thick black cloak with a black mask covering his entire face except his sharp eyes. He was seated in an enormous golden throne adorned with diamonds, rubies and gems of all kinds. The throne was big, but his figure appeared huge. He had a dagger across his waist that shone.

I wondered why an emperor of his caliber with hundreds of guards at his side that surrounded him at this moment would carry a dagger.

He was the emperor, and I  was trembling and I  couldn't hide it, he seemed terrifying. His eyes were soulless, cold without a hint of mercy in them.

Without thinking twice I mustered up the courage to part my lips and speak." Where am I? Who am I?" My voice shook but I couldn't be silent, I needed to know.

The guards slashed our their swords and aimed it towards me when the emperor held his hand stopping them. " You dare to deceive me?" His voice echoed throughout his throne room while all the spectators gawked in silence.

"I-I'm not. I don't know anything." I answered and immediately averted my gaze back to the ground. My knees were burning from the floors but it didn't matter, there was so much I did not know.

He rose from his throne and I could hear him near me with every step as he got closer and closer until he stopped in front of me. He grabbed a sword from his guard and pointed the tip under my chin lifting my head up.

"You seem to defy death even though it is the one thing you deserve more than ever." He said with hatred," and so I have decided you will die on my terms as I wish you to die."

I feared to gulp, to swallow the bile that seemed to form at my throat knowing that one movement and the blade would slit my throat. " What am I guilty of?"

He tilted his head and I tried to read his eyes but he would not let me. " Three games of death, survive them and you'll be banished or die trying and allow my palace to be your haunting abode where even death will be a mercy you shall only dream of until the end."

He grazed my neck with the tip and then dropped the sword walking away as the guards lifted me up once again and began dragging me out of the throne room as everyone's eyes followed me in hushed tones.