Sorry I haven't been updating. I want to thank everyone who has voted and commented. Please vote if you like it, and tell me if you don't, really, I want your feedback. I'm suffering from Resa withdrawal, because, unfortunately, she isn't in this chapter. Thanks for reading!
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The beautiful girl stood behind her queen every day, mimicking the pose of the girl chosen to look exactly like her. When the two girls stood side by side, they could be the same person. Except that if one looked closely, they'd see the cruel curve to one girl's bow lips, or the jagged nails on her weaker counterparts fingers.
And the proud girl knew that the queen preferred her to all the other decorative pieces. Her apathetic smirk made her seem aloof which only served to make the queen seem more mystical. She was the queen's favorite possession, the finest accessory the monarch had in her possession.
Except, the lovely teenager wasn't really a statue, she had a name and a past and a future. She had a sister who the queen had killed for a splash of red wine.
Tessa couldn't stop seeing her little sister's legs buckle as she died. Waves of fury and nausea rolled over her, blurring her eyes with a mixture of tears and anger. She couldn't hear anything past the vicious beating of her pulse, she thought that she may explode. But she was used to staying quiet and still, and as her sister was removed by a pair of clinical servants, she refused to leave her position behind her beloved queen.
Her chin may have taken on a harsher angle, her clear blue eyes slicing though the repugnant gluttons who always graced her royal majesty's table. She would not look at the queen. Tessa thought that the sight of her cursed youth would push her to the brink, so she receded into herself and waited.
She would not cry. She would not let them see her pain.
It was hours before the queen retreated to her bedchamber. Tessa followed her into her rooms, the other girl turned her large eyes towards the proud girl in sympathy. Tessa glared at her fiercely and shook her head. It was strange how someone who appeared so uncannily similar to her could look so different.
"Leave me," Tessa hissed at the girl and the girl withdrew. Tessa entered her queen's rooms. She did not think she would ever leave them.
The queen sat at her dressing table. One small hand touched her smooth cheek almost reverently. Tessa supposed that even after so many years, it must be unnerving to see a foreign face staring back from the mirror. The magic she had used to give her beauty had erased her true face. Tessa stood behind her, waiting for the queen to ask for her bath.
Instead, the queen turned to look at her pretty servant. "How old were you when the war ended?" she asked, her voice slight and reedy in the dark.
Tessa didn't have to think hard to remember. Her whole childhood had been defined by the war. She hadn't been born when the spoiled younger sister had run away with her young king, or when the queen's father left the kingdom in his eldest daughter's hands. But the hatred between her city and the desert country to the south of the mountains, that she could remember. Trapped between a sworn enemy and the uncharted lands, there was little trade, and Tessa couldn't remember a day when her mother wasn't going hungry to feed her children. Mostly she remembered the cold, and the hollow eyes of thieves in the alleys, the fear of the soldiers who misused their unsupervised power.
And then one day it was over, the sister and her husband were dead, and the only survivor was their aimless son. He must have had no honor, Tessa thought in disgust, if he was so eager to serve his family's murderer.
"I was fifteen," she said.
The queen sighed. "My nephew was only a little older than you," she smiled softly. "Both of you saved from war on the same day." She met Tessa's eyes in the mirror. "It saved you all, didn't it? My sister's death."
If she wanted Tessa's permission to relinquish her guilt, the girl would give it to her.
"I thank you for it every day, Your Majesty."
The queen's hand fluttered over her heart. "You may draw my bath."
Tessa curtsied and went to ring the bell for hot water. As she pulled the cord by the door, it swung open to reveal the queen's shadow outside. Tessa had stood this close to him many times, but never had she hated him as much as she did in this moment. Her eyes fell to the knife in his sleeve. She gripped his wrist and turned his arm, ignoring the bored way he watched her, as though she were as insignificant as the dust under his boots. She drew the knife out.
"I'll have this cleaned for you." He wandered past her to where the queen was sitting. Tessa wondered if he had any thoughts in his head. Perhaps rather than being corrupt, he was just profoundly empty-headed. Only that could account for the blind brutality he executed in a mechanical manner. It was as though there was no soul behind his black eyes.
Instead of placing the knife aside to clean, she pocketed it. There was still flecks of blood on the blade. If Tessa was smart, soon the queen's blood would be shed by the same knife that killed her sister.
A servant arrived presently with hot water and after a few trips, Tessa had filled the tub in the queen's room. She helped the queen stand and unbuttoned the row of tiny pearls down the back of her bodice. As the queen stepped out of her heavy silk dress Tessa noticed, not for the first time, the unnatural perfection of her body. She loosened the stays of the queen's corset and wondered how many girls had died to give her a tiny waist, how many hearts had been torn out for her dainty ankles.
The queen stepped into the bath and Tessa poured scented oil into the steaming water. Her fingers traced the knife in her sleeve of her dress. The prince was just in the next room. She wouldn't be able to take a step before he killed her if she harmed his queen. She thought of the queen's question. Had the queen's sister's death been worth the price? It was an easy answer for Tessa.
It was not in her nature to be soft. She knew her brutal heart, deep down she was as unforgiving as steel. Slipping the knife from her dress, she stabbed across the queen's bare chest, slipping the blade between her ribs.
The queen let out a soft exhale, as though she were falling asleep. Her fingers tensed against the sides of the tub, her knuckles bone white.
And then she smiled. Inky blood diffused through the water, swirling in sinister patterns. The queen gasped as she drew the knife out of her chest where Tessa knew it had pierced her heart.
The blood swirled faster, and then the water rose around her, forming a vaguely humanoid figure that rose over Tessa. In its scarlet fist it held the Prince's knife.
Tessa staggered back, and collided with the solid mass of the Prince. He clutched her shoulders tightly. The blood creature surged forward and in a gruesome flash of steel it ripped Tessa's chest open from collar to ribs. Its fist reached in, cold and excruciating, and drew out her still beating heart. The arteries ripped and Tessa was sure she would die, it was almost a relief. The horror would end.
Instead her chest started to knit together, until it was as though her torso hadn't been torn open only a moment before.
She clutched the tattered remains of her dress to her body and was almost grateful for the Prince's vice like grip on her. Tessa was sure she would fall if not for him.
"Don't worry," he whispered in her ear, "I've lived a lifetime without a heart, you'd be surprised how easy it is to forget about it."
Tessa shuddered at his breath on her neck. The water creature had dissolved after tearing out her heart, and in its place, the queen stood holding Tessa's beating heart. Her queen raised the heart to her lips reverently and bit into the heart, blood smearing across her chin.
Methodically, and emotionlessly the queen took bite after bite of the heart. As Tessa watched, hypnotized, the stab wound in the queen's chest closed up and disappeared.
When the Prince led her from the room so that she could no longer see the queen, vermilion blood smeared across her naked skin, she was grateful. Even when he led her into the dungeons, nothing could be worse than the agony of her heart being torn out twice in one day.