This is from my current story. Takes place in the middle of the book. When I originally wrote this, I thought it was missing something. And then, I had a dream and had to capture it in this story. It's only a first draft but I think it turned out pretty sweet.
The aching from hunger
began to ebb away as time went on and her body adjusted to not eating. She
spent most of the day attempting to sleep. She doubted she would have the
strength to stand anymore since she remained chained to the cot. She started to
sob but there were no more tears left for her to cry.
She may not have been
hungry but she was viciously thirsty. Whatever they gave her, she could not get
enough of it. It was the one thing sustaining her in this miserable period.
Not long after her
arrival, she was unsure of how long time was passing but it was maybe a week if
she had to guess, the nightmares began. Not the kind she would occasionally
have as a child. She would wake up, call for her mother, and, once she realized
she was in her room and safe, everything would be fine. No, these were beyond
terrifying. Waking up screaming, crying, clutching the thin blanket to her
chest and nearly hyperventilating for at least fifteen minutes.
The worst part about
it was, these were memories. Her memories, or at least they seemed like
memories. They featured people in her family, members of her father’s council,
her brother’s friends. So, they had to be her own memories. And, they were
horrible. They started with little things. Her father ignoring her when she
wanted to show him a new song she learned on the piano or criticizing a poem
she had stayed up half the night writing for her mother’s birthday.
Then, they gradually
began to worsen. Her brother and his friends chasing her in the garden and
pushing her into a rose bush. Being laughed at by the whole court when she
forgot her lines during a court play. Her father and mother criticizing her
when she was not successful in her lessons like her brother. “Why can you not
be like your brother?” “Thank the Gods, you will not be queen. The nation would
be doomed.” The insults and criticisms became gradually worse each time she
recalled them in her half sleep. Until it came to the memory she wanted to
forget the most. Kneeling before her father, in tears, begging him not to make
her marry Duke Scumdart.
“Father, please,” she
had cried. “Anyone else but him. Father, if you have any love for me at all, I
beg you.”
“Oh, get up, child,”
her father demanded. “Why must you create a scene about everything you dislike?
The world is not going to end because I wish you to finally be wed.”
“But, Nicholas is
older than me and he is not married yet,” she argued. “Why must I and not he?”
“SILENCE!” he shouted.
He stood and she shrank back as he stepped toward her, glaring and continuing
to shout. “I am your king, first and foremost. It is only by some unhappy
accident I am even remotely responsible for your miserable existence. You will
do as I say. You will marry the Duke within the month and you will be out of my
hair at last. Once you are his wife, you will cease to be my daughter and
become merely my subject.”
She turned a pleading
gaze to her mother, who sat in the throne next to the king. “Mother?” But, she
would not meet the girl’s gaze. “Do as you are told,” was all she said in a
blank tone.
Trying to gather
whatever dignity she had left, she staggered to her feet and bolted from the
room. When she reached her bedchamber, she dismissed her ladies and servants,
threw herself on the bed and sobbed.
With
each time she woke from one of these nightmare visions, she found the feeling
of sadness slowly fading away. For a while, she felt nothing. She, sometimes,
did not even scream when she woke. She was merely short of breath from her
heart racing at the emotion she recalled at the time. Then, the emptiness began
to fill. With pure and utter hatred and loathing. She hated them all. She
realized that her life was full of misery and despair. They never loved her.
They only acted like they had until she was old enough to be married off and
then they could pretend she never existed. She vowed that, if she ever got out
of this hell hole they had shoved her in, they would regret everything. They would
know her torment and she would be the one standing over them as they begged for
the mercy they never gave her.
