Eleven Years Ago
Her eyes moved around the darkened expanse of the tunnels, wincing as she shifted on her cot.
The Queen had come the day before. She’d claimed that what she was doing to her back was to cleanse her of an infection that could spread to everyone in the kingdom, but Nymiria knew better.
She knew that what the Queen did to her was dark and hateful because there was not an ounce of care in the way she handled her body.
She’d cut her, burned her, spit on her.
By now, Nymiria just suspected that the gods were still punishing her for her foolishness. She believed that it was deserved.
She didn’t deserve their kindness. She certainly didn’t deserve to be handled with care.
It burned, though. Every time she moved, those things on her back would pull and stretch. They would burn. Not just in the place of which they rested, but all over. A fire that she could only imagine was akin to the fires in the pits of the Otherworld.
I will lay down, she thought, I will lay down when it hurts and then I will get up. If I’m very still, if I don’t move a single muscle, it won’t hurt me.
Ignore it, she urged herself. Ignore it. Sleep until it goes away.
So that was what she did.
Hour after hour, she laid there. She let the pain lay dormant inside of her. Throbbing and tender. But she was right—it didn’t hurt when she didn’t move.
“Moonflower.”
Nymiria flinched and squeezed her eyes closed, unable to keep the tears in her eyes from spilling out. If she moved it would hurt. She couldn’t move. She needed to sleep.
“Moonflower, can you hear me?”
A strangled cry escaped her throat, the sound of it pressing around a groan of pain as she shifted. She’d heard that voice before. It was not the nice girl with the purple eyes—it was the boy. The boy that visited her, the boy that smelled like cherry blossoms.
Thorn would always tell her the story of her birth, how she came into the world on an early spring morning, when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.
He said that the first moment he held her in his arms, he could tell that she was destined for wonderful things.
He planted a cherry tree in her honor, and the whole kingdom came to celebrate.
She was passed from person to person, each of them bestowing a single kiss upon her brow, tucking petals from the cherry blossoms into her swaddle, giving her their own blessings.
Nymiria, The Flower. Nymiria, The Future Queen. Princess Nymiria Celentas, Future Queen of Nym.
“Are you hurt?” The boy asked.
This time, Nymiria nodded. It didn’t hurt as much as she believed it would. “Yes.” She whispered.
She could hear the clanking of metal against metal, and then came the unmistakable click of the lock on her cell.
The door squealed open, her body going rigid as his footsteps drew nearer.
Even in her pain, she imagined that boy’s smile.
She imagined that he looked at her the same way, but she knew that the moment he saw what’d been done to her skin, he wouldn’t be smiling anymore.
The boy whispered. “My friend couldn’t come today, but she sent me with medicine for your back.” He was behind her now and the moment his fingers began tugging away the torn cloth on her back, she let out a hiss of pain, her nails digging into the damp, slick bricks in front of her.
“Don’t… want…” She managed, a shameful sob shaking her huddled form.
“It will get infected.” Nymiria cried out when his fingers were replaced with something warm and wet, the fire lancing her spine. “I know it’s going to be difficult, but you need to be quiet.” He urged.
“What do you know?” She snarled, jerking forward.
It was silent aside from the sounds of her soft crying and the scraping of her legs against the fraying cot. “I’m sorry.” The boy whispered. “I’m sorry.”
He repeated the words over and over again until they drowned out the sounds of her cries. He repeated them as he coated her wounds with something that took the burning away. He said them one final time before he left her there, breathing in the dull scent of cherry blossoms.
Nymiria, The Flower. Nymiria, The Future Queen. Princess Nymiria of the Kingdom of Nym.
She never saw the boy again, but she always dreamed of his smile.