It was a beautiful, merry day, one where nothing was to go wrong.
So, naturally, bad things had to happen, and the witch just had to be present.
The weather was clear and crisp, and the sun was shining brightly outside. Footsteps of servants were muffled by the carpets lining the halls, and the entire castle was full of merry voices calling out to each other. Of course, I hated it. Hated it all.
Hated the happy shouts and boisterous conversations, hated the weighty sword of Justice I was forced to carry, hated the duties and the faces of the subjects when they looked upon me. Above all, I hated the Festival of the Crowns, and all it stood for. With a vengeance.
But of course, as heir of the Castle and the kingdom, I had to dress up in the ungodly blood-red and crown-gold of the Royal Lines, parade around the castle, and pretend I liked all of this mockery.
This was what they needed, and expected, from Crown Prince Rafael Terrin. Nevertheless, I would not go quietly - as usual. They all knew that, anticipated that, but this time was different. There were consequences, and hard ones.
I don't remember what it was that I did. Not exactly. I wish I could, but with time it vanished, lost in the broken memory of a broken creature. I still feel the cold jewel of the witch's staff, the cries of the servants as their bodies transformed, the silence of the subjects, and most of all, the sobbing.
It had all been because of a peasant girl who had needed lodgings for her sickly elders, but only had a black rose of Laetitia, patroness of joy and the kingdom's name, to pay with. All because of my pride, and arrogance, never believing that the little child, once refused, would carry out her threat. Just like she had sobbed, holding the now-broken rose in her callused palm, she had crashed a stolen sentry's horse into the first carriage that exited the castle gates.
The gilded, ornate carriage that had left the castle only because of the Crown Prince's fit, and his need for whatever it had been this time. Crashed, splintered, and blood seeping everywhere. The Queen had perished first, minutes after the crash. It was cruel, and sudden, and heart-wrenching. There were no last words.
With shock, all the subjects gathered for merrymaking held back, and fell into a hushed silence. The King, who was not hurt gravely, knelt beside his beloved wife, who was now dead. Dead, gone, never to come back. There was no thinking, no thought to the rest of the world - he plunged the Knife of Sorrows into his own chest, and soon the King rejoined his Queen. No sound was made.
It was all too sudden, and no-one could believe what they were seeing. The Rose Princess, Eava, 20 summers old, had not been able to accept it. In a tear-stained, wild-eyed panic, she ran into the Woods surrounding the castle, and vanished forevermore.
I - I was left all alone, standing on the front steps. Staring at the crashed carriage, the now-dead peasant girl and the stolen horse, and the limp bodies of the sovereigns, sprawled on the crimson flagstones. There was only disbelief, and numbness, and that was how the self-christened White Enchantress was able to breeze in without me, or the guards, noticing her. Until it was too late.
Arrogance, pride, no thought to the consequences of your actions - that is what she yelled at me, when casting her ruinous curse. Gold mist rose from her white-clad body, and her staff twirled as she chanted the words in the tongue of the Ancients. In one day, everything was gone, ruined, never to be the same again.
Too late I realized what she was doing to me - a worse fate than that of all the innocent observers. Pain, wracking my body, shifting my spine, twisting my mind... Hearing that was too sharp, eyesight too clear and crisp, and smell that made blood enticing. That was how I knew - Crown Prince Rafael was gone, too. In his place was a monster, one that jerked back from the mirrored walls now crumbling to dust.
The castle had fallen, the servants transformed into objects once inanimate, and the subjects petrified into stone like the victims of Medusa. The Crown Prince was no more, and a monster now haunted the halls.
A master swordsman with the gift of riding excellently, with a crown and a kingdom and a bride awaiting me in the near future - that was who I used to be.
Now I whiled the time away, staring at a black rose that with every fallen petal turned the colour of the one thing I would never have, and never deserve.
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