Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Steele
T he mirror ripples like water, and suddenly, it shows a vivid, living memory.
It's dark in the halls of a grand castle. Steele watches as young Reverie runs in a white nightgown toward a girl screaming. Moonlight dances through the rectangular windows, dappling the stone Reverie runs on. As she comes to a heavy wooden door with iron hinges, she bursts into the room to the dismay of the man whipping the young girl.
Reverie screams, the man's wild gaze slicing through her, though he doesn't stop the assault on the girl. Reverie grabs a sword from the wall and runs up to the man, the crooked crown on his head introducing him as the king. The girl, tied to the wall by way of rope, chain, and hooks, looks up at Reverie, her dark hair and features revealing that she's Reverie's younger sister. Her lip is split and bleeding, her face and arms bruised and battered, she’s barefoot and dirty like she’s not had a bath in days. Reverie notches the sword at his neck.
“Touch her again and I'll slice you from your eyes to your toes and let your insides spill out onto the floor before us,” she rasps, the conviction in her words wrapping around her entirely and solidifying her solemnly. Steele could see her beast within being fed.
The king's wild eyes go unfocused, and he mutters something incoherently. He backs away from the girl as Reverie goes toward her and unhooks her from the wall, her wrists still wrapped by rope that’s angered her skin to bleeding.
The king, his crown sitting atop his head askew, the whip dangling, dripping blood onto the floor. A woman who looks like an older Reverie storms in—the queen.
Steele recognizes her from history books, though she looks young and beautiful.
The rumors of the kingdom's history are that the queen was cursed long ago, and while the kingdom further deteriorates, she's been cursed to rule the kingdom for eternity in her loneliness, forgetting about the king—there was never anything in the books about her children.
Steele is watching the curse as it happened so so very long ago.
The young Reverie stands before her sister, sword pointed at the king, while the queen assesses the situation.
"What the hell is going on in here?"
"I told you, mother. I've tried telling you millions of times, yet you didn't listen!” Reverie's face is red with anger, hot tingly tears streaming down her face. "The last time he did it to me, I nearly cut his throat. He then turned to Seraphine. When I found out he was beating my little sister and came to you, you did nothing to stop it then, either! So I swore the next time he did it, I'd kill him where he stands."
“He knows not what he does! He’s sick with madness!” The queen defends him.
“Ah!” Reverie screams, her voice firm, defiant, as she runs towards her mother with the sword.
The king raises his hands, muttering an incantation, and in an instant, all three women are enveloped in swirling magick.
"You vile creature," he spits at Reverie, holding his bony hands up, magick sizzling between his fingertips like a neon web. "You’ll live as a beast!" the king roars. "A monster, unlovable and forgotten by all!"
Seraphine screams, running for her sister, but as she stumbles into the vortex of magick, her face goes blank, as does the face of the queen.
Reverie's body morphs into the being she is today, her skin coalescing into fur, her teeth into fangs, and the long black talons growing out from her fingers and toes.
Seraphine's body shrinks and morphs into a black raven with silver-tipped wings. The raven caws loudly before fleeing the room.
The queen's face falls as she forgets everyone in the room before her.
A puff of smoke blots out the light, and with it, the king evaporates.
At the edge of the village, Hecate Manor erects itself out of the anger and rage wrung from the royals’ wrongs, Reverie’s emotions and despair painting everything in black and decay.
The vision shifts to the queen in her chambers, staring at a locket containing a miniature portrait of two young girls—Reverie and Seraphine. Tears stream down her face as she clutches the locket, muttering, "I had daughters, didn't I?" She falls deeper into despair with each passing day, unable to reconcile her fleeting memories. Her sadness weeps out into the village and forest, siphoning all the good, happiness, and health and plunging it into starvation and sadness.
The mirror fades, leaving Steele and Reverie in silence. Her beastly shoulders slump as though the weight of the memory is shattering her.
Silence reigns long enough to become uncomfortable, yet the weight of the realization crushes the awkward silence.
"That's why," Reverie says hoarsely, finally meeting his eyes. "That's why I wanted to forget. That's why I forgot."
The look on her face is a mixture of raw pain and echoing rage, fresh new agony seeping into her features.
Steele steps closer, his instinct to comfort warring with his disbelief. "But you remember. You're still here."
"I don't know if I'd call this living," she snaps bitterly, gesturing to herself. "I've been trapped in this form, this forest, for years. No one can save me. Not even you, Steele."
"Maybe," Steele says quietly, his jaw tight. "But maybe I can remind you of what it means to fight for your own story again."