~RUNE
Uriel threw one last disgusted glance at me before walking out of the room.
He banged the door hard and it made me jump in the pool.
The echoing sound rang over and over again.
Like a haunted song meant to break whatever courage was left within me.
Then, ugly tears, helpless sobs and loud wails— everything I had been holding back finally broke free.
My body shook as I cried in the water.
“What did I do to deserve this?” I asked out loud.
“What is my crime?”
Silence was the only answer I got.
My hair was still black, a reminder of the fraud that I was as I trembled in the water.
My throat still burned with pain from all the strangling and I was sure that I now had bruises.
I slowly crawled out of the water and just collapsed on the cold hard ground.
My body continued to tremble as I lay there.
I held the necklace once again as hot tears ran down the sides of my face.
What if the necklace stopped working?
How would I be able to keep fooling the kingdom as Uriel commanded?
Would he even care?
All the candles in the room had already gone out and I was laying there in darkness.
So I turned to my side, toward the window and that was when I saw the crescent moon hanging there as if it were mocking me.
“Why do you hate me so much?” I screamed.
“Why did your blessing skip me?”
I didn’t ask to be born.
Yet everyone claimed it was my fault for being born without the blessing.
That I was cursed just like my mother claimed.
Which was wild because I never chose this!
“Why did Sayla have to die?” I asked in a broken voice as the tears resumed falling freely.
“I can’t do this. I need you, Sayla. Why did you leave me?”
I curled myself up into a ball and continued sobbing in the darkness.
At some point, sleep must have stolen me away because the next time I opened my eyes, the sun was already high up in the sky, shimmering into the room like it was the best thing I would ever know.
“Queen Sayla? May we come in?” A familiar voice called from outside the door.
It sounded like one of the handmaidens.
I felt too weak, too numb to arise or speak.
So I just continued to lay there helplessly, too broken to move.
Then my heart skipped.
My necklace was ruined.
I doubted if they would still want to serve me if they knew who I truly was.
In the end, I was going to die anyway.
“If you don’t say a word, I will come in,” another said.
“What if King Uriel is in there with her?”
“No, I already saw him this morning.”
“That’s it, I’m coming in.”
That was when I saw the door burst open.
Even then, I didn’t react.
I remained still.
“My goddess! Queen Sayla!” Anna cried as she rushed to me.
If she was still referring to me as Sayla, then was the necklace functioning again?
“What happened to you?” Sofia cried as she joined her.
Belle didn’t speak immediately.
She picked up my robe before joining the others.
“There are bruises all over her body,” Belle said as tears began to fill her eyes.
Anna picked me up in her arms.
“Did he hurt you? Did he do this to you?”
My lips began to tremble at this point.
What was I to tell them?
That he hurt me because he found out I was a fraud?
Surely they would abandon me too.
So I started to cry again.
“My goddess, he really hurt her. What sort of monster hurts the woman he claims to love?” Sofia demanded as she looked at me.
Anna instantly hugged me.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
Her voice came out broken and it sounded like it was coming from a place of similar experience.
Yet as she hugged me, I suddenly felt the comfort that I had longed for all through the night.
And I didn’t know it when my sobs grew even louder.
My body shook against her arms and the other girls joined in too, patting me gently.
“We are so sorry,” they squeaked.
Their kindness only brought me more guilt.
A fraud like me didn’t deserve all of this.
Uriel should have just killed me last night because this type of torture was even worse than death.
“I guess the Orin will always be monsters. They will always take from humans, drain us and oppress us forever,” Belle cried.
“If he could hurt a Moon blessed then there is no hope for us,” Sofia added.
Anna instantly scolded them.
“Are you more worried about yourself than your Queen? We are here to serve her.”
I slowly pulled away from her embrace.
I wanted to speak but I could not get a word out my lips.
I was just too traumatized by last night’s turn of events.
“Your majesty, let’s take you back to your room to get cleaned up,” Anna suggested.
I nodded slowly and they carefully helped me to my feet.
Belle helped put my robe back on and they led me out the door.
“Her Majesty is passing through. We demand that you turn away from her immediately,” Anna announced firmly.
All the guards that lined the hall instantly obeyed.
I knew it was not Anna they feared but their king.
When Anna saw that the coast was finally clear, they started taking me down the long corridor.
Eventually, after it felt like we had gone through multiple cold hallways, we finally arrived at my room.
It was a surprise that we hadn’t gotten lost.
When we entered my room, they led me to sit on my bed.
“Are you hungry? What would you like to eat?” Sofia asked.
“We can make the maids cook you whatever you like. Pecks of being a queen,” Belle said and smiled in an attempt to cheer me up.
My mouth felt dry.
Nothing seemed interesting to me.
I didn’t think I wanted to eat.
So I shook my head at her.
“You can’t do that. You need to eat good food. You need strength. You can’t face that monster on an empty stomach,” Anna explained.
“Perhaps we should run her a bath. A warm scented milk bath. That might help raise her mood and she might be able to properly heal herself,” Belle suggested.
Once again, my heart skipped at the mention of healing myself.
I didn’t even have the proper energy to be terrified.
“That sounds like a good idea. One of us can go get her food while the rest of us prepares her bath,” Anna instructed.
“I’ll go get the food,” Sofia said before smiling warmly at me.
I couldn’t bring myself to react.
I just watched her go.
“Come help me run her bath,” Anna told Belle.
Together, they brought the large bath basin out to the center of the room.
Then they began to pour in warm water.
The scent of roses and lavender soon filled the room.
Belle had been right.
It did smell calming.
“I always love the smell of roses,” Belle said.
“I hope our queen loves it too.”
When everything was ready, they came back to me.
“Come on, let’s get you in there.”
I slowly got off the bed and they began to undress me.
There were red angry marks on my arms from Uriel’s violent attack on me.
But it was my neck that hurt the most.
I quietly got into the water and it was when I got wet all the way to my neck that I remembered the necklace.
I gasped.
“No. No. No!”
“What’s wrong, your majesty!” Anna cried as both she and Belle stared at me in shock.
That was when I realised that nothing had happened to my appearance.
My hair was still silver, just like Sayla.
The necklace had not malfunctioned.
I was just being paranoid.
I finally relaxed in the water.
“T— thank you,” I finally whispered, finding my voice.
“You don’t need to thank us. It’s our job to take care of you,” Belle said as she began to pour some of the water on my hair.
I shivered at the warmth on my head.
I felt it seep into my body and calm my trembling nerves.
It was so relaxing that I almost began to gaslight myself into thinking that yesterday never happened.
Until the door suddenly burst open and my delusions instantly disappeared.
King Uriel Vorn stood in the doorway.
The women instantly bowed their heads when they saw him.
They dropped to their knees immediately and their faces touched the ground.
“Your majesty!” They cried.
My eyes went wide with shock as I stared at the monster from last night.
Was he here to finally finish me off?
“Leave us,” Uriel stated once.
I felt a cold chill creep up my spine as I watched them instantly jump to their feet and run off without looking back.
Uriel finally looked at me and there was both a mixture of disgust and hatred in his eyes.
It burned way too strong.
It was impossible to ignore.
Once again, I had been left alone with the monster and I didn’t know if I would survive it this time.
When all hope is lost… What then?