The morning wakeup call came with a scream as icy water was poured over me. Without thinking I jumped from the bed, soaking wet, and launched myself at the person holding the bucket. I sank my claws in the shirt of the person tackling them to the ground, my sleep fogged brain instantly in fight mode, hazed with the insanity I get during battle. I was about to rip out the person’s throat when two other sets of hands were replaced quickly upon me.

I let the first person go and turned on to the others, baring my teeth. I didn’t see the faces of the people for I was already too far into my insanity. My mind and senses filled with blind rage and remembered agony.

The people came at me quickly, their feet pounding across the wooden planks of the floor. I grabbed one with each hand, fisting in their shirts and threw them at the far wall. They quickly got up, yelling for someone else. They ran out of the room, and I followed them, the dark magic, dripping from my fingertips in dark sparks and in my soul telling me to enjoy this.

Enjoy the hunt; enjoy the kill, it hissed in my mind.

Running swiftly up the stairs in a trace I burst out into the light of the ship’s main deck.

The two stopped to stare at me in horror and I felt my mouth twist in an evil snarl of a smile.

“This will be fun,” I hissed.

I stalked them, trailing them slowly to draw out my own fun and pulled out a tread of my magic. The sun unnaturally clouded over in thick dark fog as lightning lit the sky afire setting thunder to shriek in the air. The sound of which sounded like a thousand demons’ screams.

I held out my arms looking to where my prey stood in fear with narrow eyes and hair whipping wildly around me. The harsh wind whipped around me showing dominance, encouraging me to do my worst.

People came up behind me, but I barely noticed their presence. The wind buffed them, knocked them back.

“Night, stop there, it’s no use! She’s gone insane!” a woman screamed into the wind.

“I have too!” a boy yelled back.

I focused my attention on two of my prey. As lightning struck above me in javelins of sparking light I laughed at an evil twisted sound.

“Strike them down,” I hissed.

The lightning struck just barely over their heads, singeing their hair. Then a pair of thick arms wrapped around my waist suddenly yanking me away. I turned, prepared to  attack claws out, but the arms held me to a large chest when I tried to spin around in them.

I paused for a moment smelling something familiar. Something that crept through the murderous haze and then they hugged me tight.

“Stop, please…” came a deep but small pleading whisper.

Something snapped within me, the wind shrieked in outraged protest as it died to early, but before it did it ripped me out of the arms of the man who had snatched me up and lifted me in the air.

As it disappeared in a sudden rush, I hung there in the air, the lightning flicking through the clouds with thunder crying bloodcurdling screams overhead. The magic in the air around me formed together in a dark spike and lanced me through my chest piercing my heart. Wrenching me out of my insanity I screamed, the same sound as the thunder in a deep draconic roar. I looked below me to the ship dazedly. The two boys laid at the end of the deck laying still as death and the others stared at me in frigid horror.

The rain poured, crying over us all. I slowly fell from the sky smacking into the deck, a second time, so hard the wood groaned and shuddered in protest to it.

Tears fell from my eyes like the rain that poured from the unnaturally blackened sky. I curled up and hugged my knees to my chest.

“What have I done?” I whispered in horror at myself. I stared with wide eyes out to the raging sea beyond. The waves crashed into the side of the ship, tilting it dangerously. Then came the stabbing pain in my body, the black magic’s rage at being stopped.

I screamed, “NO! STOP IT! NO!” over and over again.

“Night, don’t do it!”

 Someone picked me up gently in their arms as I screamed and twisted in pain. This person pressed their lips into my sodden hair and whispered, “Shh. Everything is okay now. Slowly release it from your body.”

I ripped myself away as I felt the need to shift forms coming upon me. I dragged my twisted body to the edge of the ship throwing myself off as in a flash of brilliant silver light as I become my true self. I flew up high into the sky of dark angry clouds shifting like smoke, wildly whipping winds, and through bullets of rain. I roared in pain, giving my rage to the air. Magic ripped free of my body. Floating free in the air around me for a split second before the magic rushed back in.

As it did the weather slowly started to disappear as if it had never been there, the seas calmed. The ship now only swayed lightly side to side.

I fazed back to my mortal form too weak to maintain my dragon half and floated back down to the ship like a feather on a gentle breeze. When my toes touched the ship’s deck I collapsed. But I tried to crawl my way over to the boys who lay sprawled and unresponsive on the deck. They were pale and growing cold.

Dead.

I touched my hand to each forehead before slitting my wrist with a finger tipped claw. Blood poured forth hot, fresh and fast into the mouth of the first boy, the one of white hair. Then I moved my wrist to the mouth of the other. His hair was a light brown, his eyes sightlessly blue.

I pulled my wrist away and held it with the other’s mouth; within seconds the first boy coughed and swallowed. The other boy followed suit within seconds of the last. They moved to their sides and coughed up blood, the poison of my blood having done its work.

I felt dizzy as I stood, swaying as the ship hit a wave and I tumbled over the railing silently, heading toward depths of the ocean’s shining green waters, as the grayed sky showed little light of the sun. A light rain falling with me. This time no one followed me in.

I drifted down to the bottom, my wrist turning the water dark red like a glass of spilled ruby wine. Then nothing else as I ceased to be.

~

 To my surprise I felt myself breathing in, my lungs filling with rain scented air. A warm breeze caressed my body, making me shiver. I was wet and cold, laying on a solid surface. Slowly I opened one eye, not daring to hope, but the world stayed where it was supposed to be and around me people murmured, whispered.

As I opened both eyes to take in the dull colors of this world, the sun shined dimly on my face, the voices stopped. The pause was long as I stared into the face of my father who appeared along with the boys, I had killed then brought back with my blood magic. Then to the girl who had slept with me in the same bed last night, to Night himself. Three other men and women I didn’t know stood off in the background, silent and pensive.

Their faces all showed shock mingled with fear. All but my father’s face.

I didn’t care. I was alone and in pain, I wanted to cry. All others be damned.

 I launched myself at him clinging to his neck as I sobbed. His arms came around me slowly to comfort. I pressed my face into the curve of his neck and cried.

“I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to…I told you I’m not safe. I’m insane!” I cried into his neck.

“You’re fine. It wasn’t your fault you were triggered. It’s the black magic,” he whispered back.

“No! It’s me; my mind and soul are broken.”

He rubbed my back for a while, and I stopped crying soon after but the welling dread in my heart stayed.

“Thank you, Dare, but believe it’s time I need to apologize to everyone,” I whispered and pushed away.

I stood up in the middle of their crowd. “I’m very sorry. I must tell you I didn’t do this on purpose. I have black magic infused in my soul when I was being tortured. A lot of things can set it off and I have no control over it when it does.”

I bowed slightly but Dare lifted me up. I looked to his face. He stared proudly at them, like Elves always did, his pointed ears showing strongly, proud in the light, declaring what he was.

“This is my daughter,” he announced, and he took my hand. I stared up at him with wide eyes. He smiled down at me, showing his perfectly even white teeth. Everyone stared at him in complete and utter disbelief. Then they turned their huge cow eyes to me.

“Daughter,” they all mouthed as one. It was as if they were seeing me for the first time and more like I was some kind of worm under their shoe rather than a person.

“She has only just escaped from ten years of torture and horror, so she’s still…on edge. Everyone please meet the daughter of me and my precious Bellia.” He pushed me forward a bit and I lifted my chin. Even if I was low in their eyes, I was still a princess by blood and birth.

The young man that came up to me seemed to be a few years older than myself. He had long black hair, blacker than even mine and his eyes were a glowing red, the color of fresh crimson blood. His skin was a dark tan, and he had a beautiful angular face. Like a devil’s.

He came to within a foot of me and a woman grabbed his hand to pull him back, but he pulled away from her.

“Night, please”, she begged him.

He didn’t look at her. He stepped so close that my chest touched his. My body responded by shivering in strange delight, and I had the urge to press myself against him. Clearly, I was starved for the contact of other people; else I would not be acting so.

He bent his head and brushed the hair from my neck, breathing in, a smile creased his lips.

“I knew it”, he said in a soft voice.

I froze, my mind was in a rage again. But this time it wasn’t about shifting to kill. So, what was it?

He pulled away and once more looked down at me with his glowing crimson eyes. He grinned, showing his teeth and two sharp gleaming fangs caught my eye.

Fangs! But as the sight of them should have made me want to kill him, it made me feel shy.

Shy! Of all things!

I felt a blush creep into my cheeks. He brushed his fingers across my cheek looking to Dare. Dare looked somehow understanding and angry all at once, so all he did was nod once so slightly I could have missed it.

Night went to stand behind me and look over the top of my head to the others. He just grinned lazily at their bewildered expressions. He also placed his hands about my waist, one on either side.

Now I was mad. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” I asked him hotly, rounding on him.

“Taking claim on what’s mine, Bride,” he whispered in my ear. I got so furious my hair burst into flame. The black flame became my hair, licking at his hands and fingers. He let go with a yelp of surprise. I stepped over to my father’s side. He was laughing now.

“So, what’s your name?” asked one of the boys I had murdered, the blonde one.

“I don’t know my name”, I said looking him straight in the eyes.

His jaw dropped.

Dare came over. “She is the Princess of the Kingdom of Annwin. Her mother was the Queen Belladonna. I had heard years ago that my Bellia had a daughter and I just assumed she was forced into a marriage and had a child from that union. But it turns out that the child was mine. I heard the name of the child was Hazelin and here she stands before us all.”