The waves rolled over in a blanket of black; sea rough and whitewash covered the dim sand. The grains scrapped over the bare skin, splitting until raw. Red and pink flesh splintering across the landscape of her body. The low tide pulled the monster from its slumber. Evelynn inhaled and sat up, grinding her jaw as she awoke.
Her calloused and dry fingertips grazed over her neck, still not adjusted to the candlelight cell. Evelynn squinted her eyes as she ran her fingers across the thin clotted crimson line on her neck. The soft skin, cold as her fingers wrapped around the side of her neck, rubbed the clotted wound, feeling the deep rumbling pain of the remainder of him. It burned and ached in her neck, slowly rising Evelynn removed her calloused hand from her neck.
The orange and red flame flickered onto the white wax. Swaying and drifting its light across the bricked cell. The metal sang as the light reached it. Evelynn inhaled, smelling the metallic tinge of rustic dried blood. Watching the candle melt and continue to flicker Evelynn pieced together the lost puzzle pieces, slowly placing them at the right angle, twisting and rotating the pieces until she was aware that the metal bars and rooting bed frame were a part of the palace cell.
Her eyes skidded across the walls, watching the insects and dust float and crawl across the stone. Raising her fingertips to brush the red line across her neck once more a soft, grumble and squeak of springs met her ears. Her head shot to the neighbouring cell, the coat of dust and stench of blood whispering an ear-splitting echo only hers could hear. The burn in the back of her throat grew with every inhale. Evelynn etched forward, gradually shuffling forward until her arms scrapped against the cold metal. Peering through, the candle flickered her heart in her throat pounding as the candle continued to flicker. The white wax dripped down the body of the withering white cylinder and landed on the bronze plate cracking and drying on the metal.
Evelynn's tongue slithered between her teeth, encasing her fingers around the metal bars. The cold metal's burn tickling up her arms. With a breathy inhale a groan replied, the painful and exasperating noise etching out of the darkness' throat. With a flicker of candlelight, Evelynn realized it wasn't the darkness but rather the embodiment of it hunched over a bed, opposite the cold bars she held on to.
The body groaned and moved, standing up with an exhale the dark body whimpered before raising a slender hand to his face. The straw white hair and frayed collar were covered in a tinge of dried crimson red. Evelynn took a step back at the sight. The purple swollen eyes, tilted at her. The bruised splotches and pale skin displayed a story that was not deemed fit for him to tell.
"Princess," The shadow stern man crackled between his split lip. "I was wondering when you'd arrive here,"
Evelynn clenched her red knuckles and rolled her tongue between her teeth. "How did you get here?" A hiss between her teeth. The broken voice triggered pain in her heart, desperation lingering in her chest.
"Well, your most noble consort Azrael left me to rot in here." He clicked his tongue. "Seems he's done the same to you," His face strewn between the gasps in the cell bars.
Evelynn threaded her arms through the bars and gripped onto his collar, "Be glad your rotting in here when you know Athrolila would of done to you. What I could do."
"He did that too. Threatened me," His face blank, dangerous. "You were so close," He spoke softly his swollen eyes squinting, "So close, and I ruined it," He pressed his lips together.
"And you're proud? " Evelynn bared her teeth.
"A work of art I must say," A smirk appeared on the split lips.
Evelynn watched that smile brighten. The bloody and grim smile brightens at the misfortune of the circumstance. She huffed and curled her fingers around the base of his collar. The fabric is folding and pulling at its threads. Her chest heaved and she pulled him into the bars. Creating an echoing rattle of the metal. Evelynn ducked and grasped a shatter of stone in her hand.
As the shadow's stern body fell backwards, dizzy and disorientated a shattering scream escaped his throat, gurgling the warm blood that filled his mouth. Evelynn released the shard of stone, its tip dripping the thick red liquid that he was grasping at.
Evelynn observed the strewn figure of a man, grasp and scratch at his throat it coughed and spurted at the mouth. Her blue eyes thinned in satisfaction, feeling the weight in her heart lift. As the body spasmed and spurred then lay still Evelynn swallowed. The guilt in her gut stirred but did not grow, lingering like an insect bite on soft skin.
~
The echoing of the clamouring of fists on the oak table always lingers in Azrael's mind. The remains of the court spread across the table, he closed his eyes for a brief moment and felt his heart pound in his chest.
"We are invading Athrolila." Azrael dictated.
"With the plan you asked for?"
"No," Azrael placed his index and thumb around the bridge of his nose. Before exhaling, "We invade, armies, soldiers, chemicals." He waved his other hand around, hovering above the oak table.
"But-"
"-Speculation has occurred," Azrael continued, "But let me re-assure you that the Princess of Athrolila has been found, and I plan to invade," A hiss on his tongue.
"My liege. Yours are the ramblings of an old man, saturated with malic and mistrust, that he no longer knows up and down. Can no longer see beyond the walls of your own monstrous Schloss. She betrayed you, yes, but we have aided you in your ascension and still, yet we fight for you over this woman? For her father's territory?" A court member challenged.
"Azrael-" Marcus and Aiden croaked in succession.
"I require undiminished loyalty until the ground on which we die has rotted. I have no use for one who cannot comprehend the breaking of trust and needless to say the misleading of one love, for this conquering was sought out years before her Highness and will continue to do so." Azrael inhaled sharply standing up and placing his hands on the oak table, "My men we shall conquer Athrolila and every single piece of land, shall be stripped from her grasps her army in the sand and her head stalked on a post. Her crown shall be mine." Silence echoed supportive in return.
"Begin to prepare men." He breathed between his teeth.
As the bodies clamoured out of the room Azrael observed the eyes of his men. The glassy and wrinkled eyes hide their own agendas behind their eyes. Fear struck in their pupils. As his court disappeared out of the ballroom, two pairs of eyes remained. Azrael's eyes slid to Marcus and Aiden. Marcus' brown eyes are hopeless and glassy, Aiden's stripped with fury and lust.
Azrael huffed, "Gods-"
Something broke within Marcus, the King in which he confided had turned into a reincarnation of a monster in which he rebelled against being. His father. Marcus knew deep down that Azrael was scared, frightened. He knew he was acting on anger.
Marcus' train of thought immediately jumped back to the day in the training room, where Evelynn just listened to him, held him and the lack of fear he felt. A feeling of safety and protectiveness. He knew that the empathy that protruded from her heart that morning was real, and that made her even more dangerous.
Marcus shot up from his chair.
"War doesn't determine who is right Azrael," Marcus clamoured his fists on the table. "It determines who is left,"
Azrael paused. His hands twitched before he hid them, placing them behind his back. Aiden's eyes changed from power soughing to worried.
"Look at the last war, what we lost." His eyes stuck on Azrael's. His wide green eyes flickered across the room but refused to meet his friend's eye. "Men go into battle. Women wage war."
~
The blur of yellow flickered through the cracks, wedged through the bricks the light dimly shone displaying a thin outline of a window wedged near the door. The glass illuminated the cell as the sun ran up the horizon.
The pungent smell of inky crimson blood from the neighbouring smell engulfed her senses and Evelynn was promptly up on her feet. Her gaze dropped to her feet and small stones covered the floor of the stoned cell. She lowered herself down to the ground and seized a handful of stones, as small as a fingernail. Placing one in her right hand Evelynn flipped it between her fingers and rapidly through it at the window. A crack appeared in the window. With a huff Evelynn through another and a successive until the crack became a spiderweb on the glass, twinkling the sun that burst through it. Finally, a crack shattered through the empty prison cells.
Evelynn a smirk on her face ravaged through her knotted hair, pulling a hairpin out of her locks. She twiddled it pulling the pin apart. Evelynn bent the pin until it resembled a ninety-degree angle, flicking the rubber tip of the end of it. Bending the tip of it again. Another pin in her mouth she placed it in the lock and pressed the metal upwards against the lock, she twisted it applying tension, then inserted the pin without the tip into the lever above the other pin. Twisting it aggressively a click met her ears and the lock clattered to the ground. Her smirk brightened and she opened the door, leaving it ajar she walked up the exit door, broken window pieces still attached to the frame.
Evelynn gripped onto the doorknob twisting it, she placed the pin in the door but it wouldn't budge. Pursing her lips together he hurled herself up onto the door frame, crawling into the shattered window.
Her arms burned, as glass ran its edge over her skin. Clenching her jaw and clamping her teeth together Evelynn persisted.
She dropped down opposite the door. Rubbing her palms over her arms. The soft red lines along her skin didn't spill excessive amounts of blood but just enough the expose the pink flesh and sting like hell.
A swirling stairwell met her awake. Evelynn momentarily began to sprint up them. The dark stairwell circled up, the never-ending staircase exhausted Evelynn as she reached the top step before the next flight a door peered on her right. Exasperated, Evelynn twisted the door open and hope-filled her bones as it was pushed ajar.
Her body quivered and her hands shook as she saw what lay at her awake, the carefully crafted weapons, shining at the splinter of sunlight bursting through behind her. Her eyes scattered across the room, jars of colours sitting on a large shelf intrigued her. The labels stuck on the jars were written in cursive which she could barely decipher. One however written in Ancient Eramadam she knew well. The blue liquid swaddled and swished in the jar as Evelynn wrapped her calloused fingers around it.
She let out a whimpering breath as her chest ached, and her fingers tingled. Her heart knew this poison. It killed hundreds of her men in its fog form. Evelynn returned the blue liquor onto its dusted place on the shelf before seething a blade suitable for her predicament. Its black hilt and the curved blade slid between her shoulder blades as she placed it in the back of her corset. The ripped green hiding the dark trailing point knife.
A red ribbon caught her stare as it hid in the half-open desk drawer. Evelynn walked over to the desk, carefully trying not to set a rhythmic squeaking of the floorboards into a frenzy. Picking it up she noticed that it was a parchment roll. Pulling the red ribbed she soon sprawled the parchment paper on the desk. The map of the continent was barely visible in the splinter of sunlight courtesy of the ajar door. However, Evelynn could see the red dot that marked the castle of Athrolila and a larger one on the beach of Delta, east of Ampepan. Impulsively she rolled it back up and secured it with the red ribbon.
Evelynn continued to climb up the remaining staircase, the sunlight at the top. With the map in her hands, the light grew until she met a door. The padlocked door was the only thing stopping her in her steps. The garden splintered through the bars, and the fountain only paced away. The cobblestones called her name. Evelynn lifted the remaining parts of her green dress and kicked the rusty and mouldy lock with her foot. Hearing it clatter to the ground was music to her ears. Knowing that she now has limited time she braced herself for a sprint.
Taking off as a guard passed with a horse in his hand. Evelynn ran up to the side of the passing horse before throwing a leg over. Chuckling to herself as the guard's lead which he didn't hold onto tightly ripped out of his hands—sending a loud painful noise from his mouth throughout the garden as the rope grazed over his palm. Evelynn sent the horse into a gallop the forest opposite the garden where she first escaped was lined with guards, seething her blade Evelynn ripped through the line of bodies decorated in Eramada's silver and green armour. Blood splattered over her dress and coated the knife she stole. She broke through the line and galloped into the forest, holding her head down and kicking the horse turning onto Brookthurst Path. To Home.
~
"Azrael," Aiden called, seething his blade.
"I know, Don't." Azrael returned, lowering his blade, and loosening his grip on the hilt. Azrael watched Evelynn disappear down the winding path. The blurred outline of her body melted between the trees. "War is brewing and she will drown in it."