Darkness. So much darkness that I forgot what light looked like, what it felt like. When I saw sunlight again, I hated it, hated how it felt when it tore at my flesh, how it stabbed my eye sockets, until I was raw. I vowed to kill all light so that I would never burn again.
I owe my childhood survival to two people, and two people only. My mother. She nursed me to health when she finally found me, locked away in the palace dungeons, surviving on the water that leaked over the stones and seeped into the prison floor.
And Marie. A servant girl. She hid me in cabinets, away from my father and his assassins and their prying eyes. Sneaked me food, half of her own meals. She serves me now, and I wonder if she remembers those nights when she brought me blankets (never enough to assuage my freezing skin) or stayed awake with me when nightmares plagued me.
Did I ever thank her?
~*~
When she barged into his study drunk, Siegfried felt hot irritation clench his jaw. "What are you doing?" he snapped. "Have you no self-control?" In the back of his mind, he already knew the answer.
With a wide grin she answered, "Sometimes I'm so cold that I have to drink. I think I might freeze otherwise."
"You know, of course, that alcohol only constricts blood ways. It doesn't actually warm the body; in fact, it just makes you colder." He didn't know why he bothered telling her this, for she just giggled and talked about something utterly insignificant. He buried himself in some work until he noticed her sudden silence.
When he looked up, he started at the indifference in her face as she stared past him. No, not indifference. Something-- "They're getting married," she whispered so brokenly that Siegfried winced and had to look away. Of course. That was why. He couldn't bear to see her grief. When he looked back at her to apologize, she'd collapsed into a chair and hunched over with her face in her hands. "And they're taking William." After some time she lifted her face, and the red in her eyes came into focus, the sallowness of her face--skin stretched too thinly, too tightly, for too long.
He wanted to die.
Then her face grew serious, darkened, hollowed. "I hate light," she spat, the growling of which raked his spine with chills. "What good is seeing anything by it if what you see only drives knives into your soul?"
Several seconds passed. "You could tell them," he said, not answering her question. "How you feel."
Even her smirk looked hollow, dark, like a scar ripped over her face. "Why? The king." And she had no more to say, needed not to say anything else.
Yes, Siegfried lamented. He'd be better off dead than to watch her porcelain soul chip, crack, shatter under every weathered blow it withstood, rather than watch what light glowed beneath her skin be snuffed out by every hardship.
They were all damned, and they deserved it for killing innocence and hope. Siegfried vowed never to forgive himself nor anyone else for their disgusting, animalistic actions. Humanity was diseased, and no number of doctors would be able to fix it.
~*~
Marie and heavy silences didn't get along; she'd learned this about herself early on. So she broke the silence, knowing she'd be prying when she asked, "How do you feel about marrying Her Highness?" Secretly, of course, she wanted him to hate the idea, balk at it, at least tell her what she and about a hundred people already knew.
Instead he didn't say anything. Confused, Marie straightened and turned back to look at him. He sat, staring across the room, lost in thought. Light slipped through his curtains, highlighting the gold accents in his shirt. "Audric?" He'd told her a long time ago that 'sir' was entirely too formal. "You heard me, didn't you?"
Reality flickered back into his face as he turned a bit to look at her, as if suddenly realizing she were even there. After clearing his throat, he said, "I am," he hesitated and Marie waited. Say it. Say it. Please. "Honored." No, you dummy, not that.
Hiding her frustration, she pressed, "Oh, I'm sure. Any man would be. But are you happy about the arrangement?" Instead he repeated himself, much to her annoyance. A new tactic then. "So you mean to say that you love Her Highness, and you've been hoping for this?"
"I do love Princess Ether. All of us do." She had half a mind to punch him, shake him around a bit until he stopped evading her. She'd have to settle for starching his clothes too heavily next time.
Speaking of laundry, Marie almost let her smirk cover her face as she slipped the garment into his drawer. His sudden sternness caught her off guard. "Marie, that's not mine, and you know it." How had he--?
Turning to apologize with a heated face, she faltered upon seeing his. Not looking quite her way, Audric appeared...defeated. Sullen. His face grew longer and heavier with every passing moment and his shoulders sunk. Either he was a god-awful liar or he didn't care that she saw because he repeated, very softly, "Not mine," before sinking farther into his chair. "I think I need some time alone. I'm sorry."
Heavy-hearted, Marie nodded, picked up her basket, and retreated. On her way out the door, she couldn't help tearing up when she caught him slip his hands over his face and exhale shakily. She almost vowed to leave them be.
When she tried the same in her mistress' room, Nora just handed it back to her, looking away and whispering, "Please stop this," before shutting her door in Marie's face. Stomach rolling, Marie tried not to cry until she returned to her own room.
Even more desperate, Marie tried praying. Even if she knew how to pray or who to, she didn't know what gods would hear her--a servant, a maid--on behalf of a cursed woman, but Marie couldn't fathom enduring the emptiness that love might've left Nora with.
Would this blow be too much? Nora could survive any number of physical tortures, but could she survive one that left her so raw inside?
~*~
Darkness and hatred go together for me. I will always have both, even when I have nothing else. That's why this place is perfect. Perpetual darkness. Everlasting hatred. Suspended between nothing in this place between worlds.
Sometimes I wish I were in hell; other times I remember that I am, in fact, there as I gaze upon the dusty bones of decrepit saints. Good people. Dead.
Because I don't know how not to kill. Doesn't matter how much I vow to live, to save. I am cursed.
The body drops into the pyre, and I feel all light leave my soul.
