Page 10 of Bloody Black

O utside the door, I wrench free, stumbling into the hallway. “Help!” I scream, and then trip over a body at my feet.

My hand claps over my mouth, at the sight of something so shocking that I can’t process it.

The guards outside my door are dead. My maid and my butler, facedown on the stone floor. These men had killed them all. Every last one. It defies comprehension. Unmitigated horror sprawls down the entire corridor, body after body.

“Oh dear,” one jeers, “everyone in this wing has already met their untimely demise.”

He shoves me so hard that I fall to my knees.

“Don’t break her legs or we’ll have to carry her,” he laughs.

And what happens next is even more shocking than the corpses around me, because I recognize that laugh. Would know it anywhere, because I’ve heard it nearly every day.

“Roger?” I ask, dumbfounded.

He removes his mask. “Princess.” He performs a curtsy, his grin huge.

I cannot fathom this. In the silence of the hall, Roger laughs. He’s thrilled by the expression on my face.

Then the tallest one speaks. “Take off your masks. The jig is up, gentlemen.” I know his voice too. Even though I swear it must be my own imagination.

Venka.

Roger.

Another mask is removed to reveal Baldric. And of course there is Soren, standing behind me.

I feel faint, and nearly swoon. I am so shocked, I don’t even consider screaming.

“On your feet, Princess,” Venka demands, hauling me upward by one arm.

Soren gives orders while Roger wraps my wrists with rope. “We’ll go straight to the docks as planned. There’s much to do, and not nearly enough time.”

From a young age, I’d been trained with swords, guns, and knives. I could fight and swim and ride as if the demons of hell pursued me. Yet none of that seem terribly useful at the moment. Instead, I feel utterly incapable. Overwhelmed. Out of sorts.

Venka hauls me down the corridor. “You’re lucky,” he says, his deep voice silky smooth. “You never would have survived a marriage to him. Killing you quickly is the most kindness you’ll get.”

There had to be a mistake, a missing piece, something I hadn’t seen.

William loved me—I knew he did. I had felt it in all those small moments: how he adjusted my crown in a hallway, how his eyes were always on me.

He spoke to my father as if they were equals.

He’d truly cared about me and my kingdom… didn’t he?

No body left to find.

The words cut through my delusion like a blade to the ribs, and suddenly, the truth is unbearable in its simplicity.

I am not special to him, and I never had been.

I was merely a pawn, and one he played well.

The realization hollows me out, a pit forming where my heart had been.

I let out a shuddering breath, and this time, when the tears come, I do not try to stop them.

I had done this to myself. I had walked blindfolded into the abyss.

As my guards drag me through the darkened halls, the flickering torchlight dances across portraits of my ancestors. Painted, solemn, they watch. Utterly indifferent to my fate.

As we pass the throne room doors, the massive gilded arches yawn open like a silent, mocking maw. My body locks up, my breath seizing in my chest. Inside, slumped at the base of the throne like a discarded marionette, is my father.

His crown lies forgotten at his side, his robes saturated with blood. His eyes, once sharp as a blade, stare sightlessly at the ceiling, his mouth slack in a final, unfinished word.

Celestia is now a kingdom without a king. My stomach sinks all the way to my knees, and I jerk backward, trying to escape the hands of those who hold me.

Any moment now, I’m going to wake up. This can’t possibly be real. A wretched, animalistic sob tears from my throat. I try to call his name, choking on it, weeping behind the fabric, my knees buckling, forcing Venka to adjust his grip.

“Father!” The cry is lost, swallowed by the vastness of the empty hall, by the laughter of the men. I twist violently as they wrench me forward, my bare feet scraping against the cold stone floors.

I writhe against Venka’s hands, my voice raw with desperation. “You swore fealty!”

Soren flinches, his jaw tightening, but he doesn’t meet my eyes.

“My father knighted you,” I gasp, struggling against the ropes cutting into my wrists. “He made you captain of his guard. You were a man of honor.”

His eyes harden, and when he finally speaks, his voice is flat. Distant. “We serve William and Rivelle. Never you.”

William’s men march me to the shipping docks. At this time of night, they are abandoned. Everyone is in the village, in the taverns, in the brothels… all celebrating my happy nuptials.

I throw my weight backward, forcing my captors to stumble as I dig my heels into the stone.

My muscles are strained, my breath heaving, but I refuse to make this easy for them.

I wrench one arm free long enough to lash out, my nails scraping across exposed skin.

Someone curses—Baldric, maybe—but before I can twist again, rough hands grab me from behind.

As the docks come into view, panic sets in. My bare feet drag along the pebbled road. Forgetting my pride, I beg. “I have gold. Land. I’ll give you anything.” Tears stream down my face. “If you want power, I can help you.”

Venka sneers. “Power? You don’t have any.”

“Maybe she thinks Ben is going to save her?” Roger giggles. “When really, we have him to thank. ”

Fingers snag in my hair, yanking hard enough to snap my neck back. A sharp cry tears from my throat, but it’s cut off as silk is shoved between my teeth.

It’s my blue sash, the colors of my house, embroidered with my family’s crest. The fabric, meant for coronations and ceremonies, now muffles my screams, turning my pleas into pitiful whimpers.

“Hold still, Princess,” Baldric sneers, tightening the knot at the back of my head. “Or we’ll put that royal loud mouth of yours to good use.” The others laugh as I choke against the silk, the taste of dust and old perfume staining my tongue.

Outside, the stairs are slick with ice, and I slip, falling painfully to my knees. Baldric wrenches me upward again.

“Do you know how maddening it was?” He hisses. “To see you run toward him, so happy to see him when he returned? Knowing he’d been overseeing the rape and murder of my people?”

“I didn’t know!” I cry against the gag in my mouth.

“Enough of this,” Venka growls, and in one effortless motion, he hauls me over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

My stomach lurches, my vision flipping as my torso slams against the iron wall of his back.

The breath knocked out of me in a choked gasp.

I kick, buck, pound against his spine with my fists— but it is like striking stone.

“Feisty little thing,” he mutters, adjusting his grip, his arm like a vise around the backs of my thighs. “Save your strength, Princess. You’ll need it.”

“Help! Help!” I scream against the cloth. Surely someone will hear. Someone will come down to this section of the docks .

Venka carries me to the darkest corner, to the farthest reach. To the tip end of a dock where a row of silent ships bob. Where there’s no one around to witness what they plan to do.

He tosses me down, and I plummet to the ground, slamming my forehead on the wooden boards.

Roger stumbles over a loose plank as he approaches. “Chuck her in the water. Maybe the fish will crown her queen before the tide turns.” He chuckles.

Soren fiddles with the hilt of his dagger. “Bodies float before they sink. Someone finds her washed ashore, and we’ll have the whole blasted navy breathing down our necks. William said she must never be found.”

Baldric spits at me, his contempt landing on my nightgown. “What about the caves? Let the rats gnaw at her. No one will search for a corpse in there, least of all a royal one.” His suggestion hangs in the air like a death knell.

The men exchange calculating looks, weighing options with a grim efficiency honed through years of brutal work. They speak of me like a chore to be dispatched, a stain to be scrubbed clean.

“I am your Queen,” I rasp. “Queen by blood and decree–”

Venka slaps me hard across the face, and I fall to my side. “What you are is a useless slut. Not a drop of magic in your veins. You think you can rule me?” Rune marks glow silver across his skin, his eyes black as pitch.

He’s been hiding magic? Hiding it from me and the king?

“You think my people bend the knee to you?”

My fingers strain against the rope binding my wrists .

“I say we have a bit of fun,” Baldric says, low and dark. “If two of us hold her, each could have a turn.”

“It’s not a good idea–”

“Fucked a royal, have you?” says Baldric. “I bet it’s a golden cunt on her.”

“I say we slit her throat. Quick and easy,” Soren cuts in. “We’d best hurry, before someone comes along.”

Venka sneers. “I know your game, Soren. You don’t want to see her suffering.”

Four pairs of male eyes study me.

My skin crawls. Mute with horror, I flinch when they reach for me. I don’t know who yanks me backward and rolls me to face them. I don’t know whose hands are on me, stretching my arms over my head.

Nevertheless, I twist and writhe and buck and toss, trying to bite him despite the fabric stuffed between my teeth.

“ Hold her, you idiot.”

A zip of lightning flashes in my arm, a tearing, and my shoulder comes free of its socket. The pain makes me lightheaded.

Baldric’s eyes rake over me, dark and poisonous. I try screaming through the gag, through my nose. I plead with them, but the words are garbled, and I’m not sure they are listening.

Please let me up. I won’t say anything. Please.

The fabric blocking my mouth, along with my tears, is making it hard to breathe, and I keep gasping, my lungs desperate for air.

“Shut up,” Baldric says, his voice loud against the shell of my ear as he fumbles with his pants. I scream when I feel his length against my leg, touching me .

He begins thrusting, his hips slapping against me, and Roger is laughing.

This cannot be happening. This is not real. I’m so desperate to think about anything—

The king keeps a cage of butterflies in the garden. Black and blue-winged, delicate. They perch on silk white flowers. It’s enchanted, the only place untouched by snow. The butterflies drink from slim silver dishes, not realizing that the flowers are fabric.

Not real.

Outside their cage is freezing cold, a world of hailstorms and old dirt and dead things. And yet, inside their illusion, they are safe. They don’t seem to know the difference. I love to reach my hand into the writhing mass and bring it out, covered in iridescence—

Baldric grunts and comes on my stomach, smearing it over my skin.

There’s no time for me to think it might end. No time to even hope for a reprieve, because Roger quickly takes Baldric’s place. Grinning. Smiling. His teeth like a scythe against the night.

“It’ll be over soon.” Soren says into my ear, when it’s his turn. “Just lie there quietly.”

Venka saves the worst for last, flipping me, smashing my face into snow-covered boards. I watch the water below through a crack between them, sobbing.

No one saves me. No hero emerges from the darkness, a sword in hand. Instead there is only this terrible awareness:

These monsters have me. And I cannot get away from them.

Afterward, I lie bleeding into the silence, listening to the slap of water on the dock pilings. In the distance, waves crash upon the shore. Snow falls upon my body, and voices fade in and out, like spiders slipping between cracks in the floor.

Footsteps approach, far off. A soldier on patrol?

Cargo. Never found. Stowaway. Someone is coming.

Hope flickers inside my chest. Someone will save me.

“We’ll put her in here.” Venka lifts me like I’m a child. Deposits me into an old, open trunk, folding me in half like a dress.

I nearly black out from the pain, unconscious as the lid slams down and the lock clicks into place. Wadded up and thrown away.

Beneath the crushing weight of despair, something hot and sharp stirs inside me—a spark buried under the wreckage. William. His name sears through my mind, not as a lover lost, but as a traitor to burn. He took everything. My kingdom, my body, my future. He betrayed me.

My father warned me my entire life about men like him. Yet I’d still fallen for his lies.

Wincing with every movement, I tug at the bonds around my wrists.

Please.

Please.

The rope cruelly chafes my skin, and the bones of my hand give a painful pop, but finally, I manage to pull one hand free.

Making quick work of the rest, I begin clawing at the lid.

It would take a miracle for someone to hear my cries. Pain lances through me with every breath, a constant reminder of their betrayal. The echoes of their laughter still ring in my ears .

It was not the blows, nor the bruises, nor even the juices that clung to my insides like a vile poison.

It was William’s voice—low and venomous, laced with malice.

How could I have ever believed him? Every well-placed word had been a dagger, carving away my heart, my life, and the future of my kingdom. For what? Why?

The darkness is absolute, a smothering void that strips me of all sense of time and space.

Wrists burn where the ropes chafe, and the gag bites cruelly into the corners of my mouth.

Still, these are trivial pains compared to the yawning chasm within me.

A stark, unyielding truth—I did this to myself.

My arrogance, my blind faith, my stubborn heart, and impulsiveness…

all led me here. I saw only what I wished to see, believed only what I wanted to believe.

And the cost of my folly is everything. Because of my hubris, my father and friends are dead. Soon, I’ll die too. If I don’t get out of this trunk, I am most certainly doomed.

Tears stream down my cheeks. “Please.” My fingers claw at the lid of the trunk uselessly. “Someone help. Someone help me.”

Devoid of pride, I plead with gods, devils, anyone who might hear.

“Oh, good,” says a low, feminine voice. “I was hoping someone might join me.”

Then something wet slides against my mouth, and I scream.