Chapter 6 #2
I lifted a hand and cast a little mouse into my palm, the creature coming to life with a frightened squeak before circling my hand in search of an escape and leaping away from me into the pool of tears.
I watched as it tried to swim to safety, but all around it was nothing except the golden edges of the pool – the ring of the cushioned bench too high for it to climb up to.
I felt like that mouse, swimming through an unending river of tears with no way out.
Only that wasn’t quite true for the little creature, and with another wave of my hand, I cast it away into nothingness again.
Better not to exist than to exist in here anyway.
Within this golden prison, my magic was entirely mine, I could use it for myself to do anything I desired. Except leave. Or kill myself. I’d tried to do both more times than I could count though.
Slave of the coin.
Perhaps today would be the day. Someone would find the hidden trove of the Prophet’s treasures and claim my coin for their own.
I was nothing but a fool’s desperate desire to cling on to the power of the Fae when they fell.
An immortal creature wandering the world in hopes of death.
He hadn’t given me death though, he’d given me something far crueller than that.
Shackles and chains wound into my flesh so deeply that they were anchored within my bones.
He made me a slave and stole my free will, forced me to bend until all others would have broken.
But I’d already been broken when he found me, so here I remained.
A slave with no master, a creature with no purpose, an empty girl with no freedom in sight.
When he’d first cursed me to this existence, I’d sworn I’d never bow to the will of any master.
I may have been forced to follow the will of the owner of my coin, but I didn’t have to make the power they held over me easy to wield.
So I’d made every effort to follow the commands I was given in ways they’d never been intended.
That self-absorbed bitch who’d asked for immortality after she’d had me whipped?
I’d turned her into a tree which could never die.
She was still sitting up on a hill in the middle of the Argol Forest with birds nesting in her hair and squirrels taking shits on her branches, unable to speak or move or see, just trapped inside her own mind probably going as mad as I was.
And the lecherous old bastard who had commanded me to give him endless riches before he ‘got to work making good use of my tight little cunt’?
I’d made sure that he drowned in the money he so desperately desired before he ever got a chance to lay a filthy finger on me.
I’d watched him choke on the gold coins he’d made me give him and laughed, telling him to be careful what he wished for.
There had been more like them, selfish Fae consumed by greed at the thought of all they could claim from me and my magic.
In the end, I’d managed to turn all of their greatest desires into their downfall and freed myself from their rule until the next came along.
It had helped for a little while. Until I’d realised that if people saw my gifts as a curse, they’d no longer desire them.
They’d cast me away. Hide me in a dark, forgotten corner of the world and lose me to the endless echoes of time.
I was bound to this cage, and I could never break free of it.
So now I’d been left to rot in my unbreakable tomb with my unageing skin and inability to die.
So who did you punish in the end?
Myself.
I prayed that someone would find me now.
It had been an eternity since I’d seen the sun.
If I ever got to leave the confines of this infernal cage again then I’d make every effort to ensure their desires were fulfilled in the best way they could be.
No more tricks. No more lies or half-truths.
I would use my power in exactly the way they wanted.
I’d gift them an eternity of prosperity and in return I would at least be free of this endless nothing.
Seventeen days was such a long time to spend alone.
My sister had once told me that so long as I kept love locked in my heart, I’d never truly feel pain. And she was right. For a while. My love for her had sustained me. The justice I’d dealt out on her behalf had burned with a sense of what was right.
Even now, when her face was lost to me and her words were nothing but fleeting whispers in the dark void of my mind, I didn’t doubt my choice. I didn’t doubt my love for her. I may have forgotten the rest of it, but that love lived on inside me, even more immortal than my sorry soul.
That evil motherfucker had killed her. Taken the kindest, purest being I’d ever met and murdered her for no other reason than power and greed. He’d destroyed all of the good in my world because he believed he had the right to do so when he had no such thing.
So I’d killed him in return.
I’d taken my knife and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.
I hadn’t forgotten the colour of that. Red, red, red.
I could still feel the wetness of his blood dripping down my body, the rush of the kill making my heart race to a heathen beat which suited me all too well.
My sister may have been a pure soul, but I was no such thing.
And in the moment of his death, I found the truth of what I was.
Savage, brutal, and unstoppable in my vengeance.
I didn’t care that he was an emperor. It didn’t matter to me. Just because he was more powerful than us didn’t mean her life was his to end.
I wished I’d never done it. But not because I wished he had lived.
Or that I hadn’t been cursed. I wished I’d never had to.
That my sister would have lived. And that I could have looked into her blue eyes for the rest of our years and lived out our lives together in the happiness we should have been able to claim.
Brown eyes. I hate you more than I could ever say.
“I want to die.” Sometimes I spoke aloud like that, but I didn’t really like the way my voice sounded in this small space. It bounced about and came back at me. Taunting me with my own words.
Five minutes was a hell of a long time to be alone.
I closed my eyes. Sometimes the places my mind conjured up for me to go were so beautiful that I could just sit there for days and bathe in them. I could get lost in the idea of a freedom I knew I’d never truly claim and imagine up adventures I knew I’d never truly live out.
But I couldn’t remember the moon anymore. Or the sky, or the trees. They were lost to me. Like my sister. And everything else I’d ever known.
Lost, lost in the woods, surrounded by clouds and stones...
I wish you would burn up. Turn to ash and blow away on the wind so that I never had to listen to you again.
My mind couldn’t conjure anywhere for me today, my imagination was full of empty colours which wouldn’t form a shape for me to get lost in, so I tilted my head back as I opened my eyes and gazed up at the golden roof above me.
I ached to feel the warmth of a mortal’s touch on the golden shell which housed my soul. I would grant their every command in the greatest way imaginable.
The Prophet who’d cursed me was dead, dead, dead. Long beyond any chance for me to get revenge. He’d hoarded my power then hidden me from the world until the next owner of my destiny had come to claim me. Such a long time ago.
Too long. Not long enough. In a faraway time and place .
It wasn’t fair.
You promised not to bring fair into it anymore.
I clucked my tongue in irritation. Who was I to tell me what to do?
It wasn’t fair and knowing that didn’t mean anything.
It didn’t change anything. But it was true.
I just needed to get over the idea of fair and not fair.
None of it was fair. Granted, I’d never been the one who was on the upside of these supposed scales, so maybe if I’d been the one with the good fortune, I may have had a different opinion on fair.
Perhaps you should drown yourself in those tears. They can’t leave here any more than you can. That’ll be your fate in the end anyway. One day they’ll rise so high you’ll have no choice but to drown in them.
The silence echoed on forever.
One moment was such a long time to be alone.