"You would have been a magnificent queen"
Keilah
The first round commenced with a loud fanfare. On the raised platform, surrounded by a cheering crowd held back by vigilant palace guards, the Prince with his sword in hand fought the Protectors of the Vixens, one by one, in fights that had ceremonial flourishes and lots of showmanship but no real bite. Until her uncle took the stage.
The Prince, his blonde hair still perfectly tied back, said the ritual words to open the bout: "Lord Rustavan, I desire your niece, Lady Keilah of the House of Lavilyn to become my Vixen." There was something menacing about his tone that had been absent the previous times.
Lord Rustavan bowed and gave the required reply, "As her Protector, you must challenge me and win."
With a sudden roar, the Prince threw himself at Lord Rustavan, attacking him with a ferocity that caused him to take a step or so back and Keilah realised that he meant to fight for real. All the talk she had heard of the hatred the Prince had for her uncle resounded in her mind. How far would the Prince go? And how would her uncle respond. Surely he knew better to do anything other than defend himself.
Lord Rustavan regained his footing and shouted, "I can take you, you young pup."
He'd insulted the Prince! A rush of fear flooded Keilah. He must be planning to kill him for neither the Prince nor the Queen-Priestess would tolerate such open disrespect. As she leaned forward, clutching the sides of her seat, she saw the Prince's eyes fixed with fiery determination as he deftly attempted attacks while her uncle chuckled and parried them with ease.
Then the Prince in his eagerness to make contact, over reached himself, leaving his right breast exposed. Standing above him, Keilah cried out to warn him.
He checked himself and dodged, but he was too late. Her uncle's blade ripped into his shoulder.
"First blood," Lord Rustavan smirked, and resumed a fighting stance that carried the conviction of long experience on the battlefield, but the Prince danced back, with a grace that enthralled Keilah. Her uncle leapt forward and the Prince, in a clever move too fast for her to track, shoved his sword into his throat.
Then Keilah was staring down at the pool of blood that sprung from his crumpled body and a strong desire seized her to taste it, but strangers from the crowd raced over and beat her too it. She climbed down from the platform shakily horrified at her longing for the blood. It's not natural or right she thought as she welcomed the arms of Alyssia around her, seeing as if from far away Silsa sobbing in the arms of her stone-faced grandmother. A numbness enveloped her. Lord Rustavan was her kin even if he saw her only as part of his schemes. He was a link to her mother's past and Silsa's father and now he was gone.
"Lord Rustavan was responsible for my father's death. I have had my vengeance," the Prince shouted, his sword aloft, to cries of celebration from the crowd.
He continued, "And you shall have yours too. Many of you have known loss by the Hattavah." A hissing, ugly sound came from the crowd. "After the second round of the Vixen Trials all those who have been victims of the Hattavah can line up beside the guard tower. You will have your chance for revenge." A wild cheering broke out from the crowd and terror seized Keilah's heart.
"I want to get in that line," Alyssia said, drawing away from her.
Lady Keilah stared at her.
"I want to say goodbye."
"It won't be goodbye," Lady Keilah insisted. "We will save him somehow. I have a plan. But do anything you can for him. Stay with him. Hold up the line. Buy him time. And Pipsqueak and Jalen, you must rescue him somehow."
They rounded their eyes with a blankness that made her want to shake them.
"I'll do my part," she said, seeing Dakkoul in the cage, leaning back against the bars, staring at her. How could she leave him there? How could she drop her sword as if he did not matter? She would fight for him. "I'll try to win. The Prince has promised me his life if I win. I'll try to hurry proceedings along but you've got to do something in case I fail."
Jalen muttered something and vanished. Pipsqueak looked around uncertainly." I don't know what I can do. But I'd like to talk with him. I'll hold up the line too." She squeezed his shoulder before he loped off. She might have become a disturbed creature with revolting longings but at least she'd saved Pipsqueak.
A herald announced the gathering of the second round and Keilah hustled over to stand with the other Vixens. Lady Tynie and Lady Blyne were there already and greeted her with over-the-top commiserations on the death of her uncle.
"Of course, he had it coming," Lady Blyne said with a toss of her head. "We all knew it was a matter of time."
Keilah went to speak then stopped. What to say? She searched herself and found no real sorrow for his death only a shard of relief. She needed say something though, so she said, "How neat you look."
Unlike her own fighting outfit that now seemed wildly inappropriate, Lady Blayne's costume fit around her form with no excess material. It looked practical, whereas the pants Baba had ordered for her billowed about her. She remembered Dakkoul's words too clearly, "They don't want you to win. They only want you to participate." And now her uncle was dead.
A man clad in an official palace tunic of white with the fox emblem announced the sparring partners and she did not know whether to glad or sorry that she would fight Lady Blyne. Lady Blyne smiled when she heard, but it was not a nice smile and she whispered loudly behind her hand to her sister that she would easily win.
Keilah eyed the way Lady Blyne held the sword, like it was a part of her and trepidation seized her. She was in over her head, but Dakkoul's fate rested on her. She must fight and she must win. She could not hope to match someone who had trained every day of her life, but she could defend herself, and so she did, until Lady Blyne began to taunt her, hoping to make her attack. "Village girl," she said, "Want to be a princess, Hattavah-lover?"
That last comment made her boil inside. "I am not his lover."
Blyne screwed her face up in a smile. "Tynie thought you were. She was looking at your face when I went to kiss him. We think you ordered him to refuse to kiss us."
"I didn't," she denied, distracted, and annoyed by the insinuation, annoyed enough to try a little trick Dakkoul had taught her, just in case. A feint to one side, a flick of the wrist, and she had wrested the sword out of Blyne's hand.
Blyne looked at her sword on the ground in disbelief. "Your lover is going to die, most painfully," she declared. "But while you're in the third round fighting, I'll be out there in the line. Don't worry, I'll comfort him in your absence."
"Leave him alone," Keilah shouted, her composure shattered. "Why don't you help him if you can? Ask your father to intervene."
Lady Blyne wrinkled her nose. "My father hates him as much as anyone. I just think he's cute."
Keilah watched her go with baffled fury as the herald announced the end of the second round. As the crowd cheered, she saw that Lady Tynie was left standing, as was a tall thin, supple looking girl with a dyed blonde hair braid that swung behind her and a girl with well defined muscles and a beak of a nose. Both Tynie and herself were Fox-fair but she was the only one who with the bi-coloured eyes. In the distance she heard the Prince announcing the beginning of the punishment of the Hattavah and she longed to go there, to be with him but with the other girls she was taken into the palace and ordered to prepare.
It was by far the worst moment of all. The other three girls transformed: Tynie into a sleek white fox; the supple looking girl into a grey fox with amber eyes and the other girl into a fierce looking caramel coloured fox. In desperation, Keilah screeched atTrina to get her some blood, which she then tossed down, and began earnestly beseeching the Fox, to no avail. She did not change and the matches were about to start.
"Time," Keilah called. "I must have more time," but the Prince had arrived.
He looked at her with disappointment. "I feared you had not sufficient time to learn," he said. "You would have been a magnificent queen."
She stood in the square marked out in front of the throne room, drawn against the grey fox with nothing but her bare hands and knew she was going to die.