When I cannot run from the dangers of my life, I learned to block out the terror. Before I knew what the word trauma meant, I suffered as a child, and the level of suffering I'd gone through made my body adapt to terrible changes. My brain discovered a way to distract itself from the worst moments of my life. I never forget, but I replace the memories I cannot allow myself to feel with smaller inconveniences.
Today, I use my defense mechanisms I learned as a child to deal with a forced marriage to a monster. Lahesia speaks, but I don't hear her. Not really. My mind deviates away from my wedding and makes me think of a smaller, much more manageable problem.
My chestnut locks are in endless whorls of curled intricacy. The strands flow down the expanse of my body with no grievance, but the fifteen-pound crown is weighing heavily against my skull. While the silvery accessory is undoubtedly beautiful and decorated in a multitude of gems worthy of a queen of this realm, my hair is interwoven with the crown to keep it in place, and it is pulling out my hair by the roots.
The pain is minimal, but the fright that presses down against my chest at the thought of marrying a handsome beast is too overwhelming to process; therefore, I focus on my hair. As Lahesia reads from her ancient tome, I do not listen. Instead, I wince as tendrils threaten to leave my skull. My captor's hands are enraptured in mine, colder than ice. His voice of silk and danger pierces my chest like a blade, but the sound is muffled by the minute sound of my hair breaking against the rough force of the headpiece intermingled with my hair.
Just as distraction worked as a child, diverting my attention to the tense hairstyle that rips single pieces of hair from my head works. I'm able to centralize on a manageable inconvenience to distract myself from the treacherous truth. I drift into the pain, letting it consume my senses.
But just like I cannot pretend Oraxto is a poorly contrived dream, my efforts to distract myself are stolen away. A knife appears in gold dust in Lahesia's hand. The black blade glistens like a starry night, but as I stare at the item that is extended towards my abductor and future husband, any distraction I allowed my headpiece to become dissipates.
Now, as King Shaharuddin removes his hands from mine, I find true fright. I cannot dissuade myself from facing the black blade and my imminent death. When the murderer of wives grasps the handle, all that I can think is how the redness of my blood will not be seen on a weapon as dark as this one. With his free hand, he reaches for me again, but I flinch away.
Just a moment ago, magic that I could not fully fathom paralyzed me and made me incapable of refusing this marriage. I can still feel it, that immovable power spinning around my arms and deep within my bones, but I push through the impossibility. Just as his fingers graze my inner wrist, I stumble backwards.
I only move two steps, but it's enough that his index finger slips from its momentary hold. Deeba and Khaivya, who stand near the floor-length glass doors to the far right as my bridesmaids, audibly gasp. Lahesia, however, smiles her dangerous grin. The infallible expression on my soon-to-be-husband's face fractures ever so slightly, and if I didn't know better, then I'd think he is stifling a grin.
My feet yearn to run, to escape past the two doors the witches stand in front of, and I want to search for another unusually shaded purple door and go home. I desire the smell of the Burger King across the street from my apartment complex, and the raucous laughter of my roommate. The familiar buzzing of my phone as my mom calls, and the taste of freedom upon my tongue, are becoming distant and nearly obsolete, but I wish for them all the same.
But I can't move any more than those two steps and the helplessness weasels its way back inside my body.
King Shaharuddin breaks the brief distance between us, and I whimper when he lifts my dainty wrist once more. He lays my hand, palm up, against the top of his. I attempt to awaken my strength once again, to separate myself from him and his blade as I previously did, but I fail. I can only whimper as the tip of the knife sits in the center of my palm. The man's monolid, obsidian eyes stare at the blade that teases my unscathed, pale flesh, but he does not penetrate the skin. His gaze drifts upwards until it lands on my face, heating where his attention centralizes.
"What is your name, bride?" He asks in his sinfully honeyed voice.
I want to lie, or to tell him to piss off like I know Nola would if she were in my place, but fear makes me dim-witted. No magic prompts the truth, but the truth slips from my tongue and fills the night air.
"Evalina," I whisper.
His smile peels back, showing way to two sharpened teeth. At the sight of his fangs, I remember Lahesia telling me earlier today that Oraxto slumbers when the sun is up. I write fantasy novels, but I never thought they would hold a fragment of truth. Yet, standing in front of me with a blade to my palm is a vampyre, and I swear his grin grows when realization dawns on my face.
"Evalina," he sighs; again, he murmurs. "Evalina. Such a pretty name."
The first time the king says my name, he takes his time to enunciate every syllable. Ah-vah-lina. The second time, he sings my name like it is his favorite hymn.
"Do you know what your name means in most languages?" He asks.
I shake my head.
"It means beautiful bird or desirable bird," he says, and does not look away from me as he presses the tip of the blade against my palm until blood bubbles to the surface. "And what a beautiful bird you are, my bride."
He says I am a beautiful bird, but they are creatures designed to take flight. He clips my wings when he draws my blood, nicking a prominent blue vein and staining the white on my dress sleeves. I am a bird in his eyes, little and exploratory, but he strips away the freedom that all winged animals need when he cuts his own hand with the weapon.
Lahesia grins and announces. "May your joined blood bind you both until the primordials seize your souls."
The knife clatters to the ground, the screeching sound stealing my focus. I try to distract myself with the noise, the clatter of steel against flooring, but a man as powerful as my forced groom demands absorption. With one unharmed hand, he wraps it around my waist and thrust me into his hard chest.
I look upwards, immersed in the exquisite danger that looms above me, and I can only watch as he clamps his bloodied hand on top of mine. In the background, guests joyfully clamor in celebration, but I've just heard the snip of scissors as they sever my wings. Lahesia looks pridefully between King Shaharuddin and me, but I can feel the coldness of my prison as the door slams shut and the key turns. Deeba's face is devoid of emotions; if anything, she looks bored. Yet, when I glance at Khaivya, she mouths two words.
I'm sorry.
The music's tempo quickens, symbolizing excitement and exhilaration, but my heart flat lines. I'm in a sea of foreign confusion, and I'm drowning. Vampyre guests dance, their smiles widespread and their happiness suffocatingly present. My new husband's sticky, warm hand is still ensnared in mine, fingers intertwined, but I have never felt more alone.
As the soft air caresses my face, the glass doors open, and the magic's paralysis releases its hold. My new husband does not stop me, but watches as I rip my arm from his hold and run towards the exit. I trip once, then twice, on the heavy train of my ombre dress, but I never once curb my movements.
I sprint into the backyard of the castle, but I do not know what I expect to find. There is no expectation that the purple door to materialize because I want to go home, but foolish hope makes a person's mind believe the unbelievable. Two steps out the castle door, and I realize the reason King Shaharuddin did not immediately follow me.
On Earth, there is beauty in nature, but it pales compared to this world. The grass is alive and is greeting me with gentle swipes across my ankles. It's not prickly like the one at home, but soft like cotton candy, and it sings in a whispered cadence. The trees are in swirls of pale blues, greens, and yellows, and they sway as if they are dancing to the grasses' songs.
My jaw is slackening, and I cannot peel my gaze away when I look to the night sky and the moving stars. They continuously make new shapes in the sky, but when I gawk at their radiance beside two crescent moons, they create a new shape. All the stars in the sky join to create a ten-pointed figure with an x in the middle.
"That is the symbol of death," a dangerously low, honeyed voice says from behind me.
I know it is him, my husband, who forced me away from my world and into unholy matrimony, but I do not turn around. Instead, with my back to him, I whisper. "So, the stars know what will happen to me tonight, too?"
His chest is warm against my back, but he doesn't touch me. King Shaharuddin stands close enough so I can feel his muscled chest. I smell the richness of his essence, like honey and ashes and death. While I stare at the stars that foreshadow my demise, the back of my neck burns with his stare. When I feel his hands, I expect them around my throat for a quick death, but they move to remove the crown from my head. I sigh in relief when the first piece of my hair is extracted from the crown.
His voice is sin when he breaks the silence with an answer. "The stars are speaking a message, but not of your death. At least, not tonight."
"It's unkind to lie to your wife," I say, my breath shaky as he continues to release the tension against my head with each gentle extraction of my hair from the crown.
"Why are you certain that tonight is your last night alive, beautiful bird?" As the silvery crown is dropped from my head, clattering onto the ground to my left, the tension on my scalp lessens; yet he remains close as he murmurs against my ear. "Do you believe the cut on your hand will get infected? If so, it has already healed."
Sure enough, I look down, and all that remains is a thin, silver line across my palm.
"You and I both know I'm going to die tonight. Do not mock me," I surprise myself with the anger in my tone.
"Are you dying of an illness that I am unaware of?" He asks, continuing obliviousness.
The stars glide around the sky again, forming two bodies that mirror him and I. The one body is almost touching the other. Hands slipping out of curled hair as one stares upwards with clenched fists. They're alive, like the grass and the trees, and they watch us with the same rapt fascination as the wedding guests inside.
"I saw the ceiling," I admit. "Decorated with your other wives' deaths."
There is silence but an absence of regret as his voice glides through the night. "I've often found that art immortalizes an individual, even after names and events of their lives have passed."
When I turn around to face him, I am surrounded by the power of his presence. He is a tall, looming shadow of power. There must be magic in the air controlling me, because I can't peel my eyes away from him. I see his stern jaw, high cheekbones, and plush lips, but I also see his malice, his blatant disregard for other's lives, and I see his blood thirst. He is beautiful, more than any man in existence, but he is a perfectly wrapped bomb. A pleasant sight with catastrophic intentions.
"I do not want to be taunted, your highness," I sneer the last two words, and the corner of his lips quirk up just slightly. "Oraxto kills foreigners within the first twenty-four hours, and I am human in a world that does not want me. You may smile at me and play dumb, but we both know I am going to bleed out of every part of my body tonight until my heart ceases to beat. So do not patronize me."
The king's hands are a ghostly touch across my shoulders. They glide like tiny icicles, but the touch is so gentle I wonder if his fingers are there or if they're a cruel figment of my imagination. He wraps his hands around the top of my biceps, and he pulls my body fully flushed against him. Before, there were a few inches separating me from my forced husband, but now I can feel every inch of him. I can feel his thumbs digging into my flesh, his warm breath fanning the side of my neck, and every abdominal muscle tightening against my backside.
"You do not sound like you fear death, beautiful bride," he whispers against the shell of my ear.
I try not to shiver. "Because I don't fear death as much as I should."
"Then what do you fear?"
"Fear itself."
I answer him honestly, because what is the point of lying when I will not survive tomorrow, anyway?
His lips caress the flesh as he inquires. "What do you mean by that?"
"Death comes for everybody, whether an hour or a decade or a century from now, but death isn't meant to be cruel or vindictive. Just as life starts, death is meant to eventually end us to continue the necessary cycle. Fear is the true catalyst. People fear death because fear has a way of warping anything into one's worst imagination. There is nothing more dangerous in this world than a person's greatest fears coming to the surface. Fear is there to eat away sanity and leave behind the shattered remains of their victims. It's why I hated the birdcage and the serpopard; they were great fears coming alive in front of my eyes. But the thought of dying tonight is better than living in permanent fear."
The king's hands lower themselves, twirling and gliding down the expanse of my arms. His fingers reach mine, and he intertwines our hands and brings them up. With his grasp on my hands, he wraps mine around his thick neck, and I let him. I allow myself a moment to stop thinking about my death, and I let this monster hold me tight. My arms are wrapped around his neck and his hands move and hold my waist against his body.
He murmurs into my flesh. "The brides you saw on the ceiling died when I cut their palm with the blade. Every single one of them but you. It was the third and final round, and you are the only one to survive after twenty years of me searching. You may not fear death, but death is not ready to face you, Evalina Ochir." I flinch at the new surname, and his lips caress the skin behind my ear as he whispers. "You are mine for many, many years."
I stumble out of his embrace, and he allows me. Twice, I trip over the extensive trail of my gown, but I don't stop until several feet separate him and me. I hide in the shadows of the dancing trees, and only then do I look back to stare at him. His hands are clasped together in front of him, and I hate his regality. A king with a black thorn crown on his head.
"My name is Evalina Christmas," I snarl. "And I want to go home."
His smile is cruel, and faster than I can expect, he is underneath the dancing trees with me. He wraps an arm around my waist and thrust me into his arms. Both of my palms are against his chest, trying to no avail to separate our bodies, but his lips pressing against mine stop me. My hands collapse to my sides as his cold, yet soft, lips caress mine.
He pulls away from the kiss before I can decide if I want to kiss back, and his fangs dance in the moonlight as he grins. "No, you are not Evalina Christmas. You are Queen Evalina Ochir, the true wife of the Usurper King Shaharuddin Ochir, and you are home where you belong."
I press my hands against his chest again, and he lets me push him. The king takes two steps back and then watches me as I run. I can barely move in this dress with a ten-foot-long train, but I still try to run away from the king and his castle. He doesn't chase me, either, but I can feel his eyes watching me as I rush through the garden in hopes of freedom.
My eyes continuously look for a door on the floor that will guide me home, but there is only grass as smooth as cotton candy and sprouted flowers. But I can hear him. He's several feet away, but I can hear him counting. One, two, three, four, five, six...
When he gets to fifteen, I see a hedge maze as tall as the sky as his arms wrap around me and flush me against his chest again. I'm consumed with his scent of honey and sin, but when he presses me against him, I deflate because I can never outrun him. No matter how much time he allows, I'm always going to be a hamster who believes she can outrace a spinning wheel.
He presses a kiss to my temple and says. "Welcome home, my beautiful bird."
When he guides me back to the room where we married, I am not sure I ever left the birdcage in the tower.
--
Let me know how you're enjoying this book!
--
Updated: 12/29/2023
Word Count: 3,113