DEMENTED | Romance | Fantasy | Slight Thriller

Chapter Four: Filthy Little Wretch

Chapter Four: Filthy Little Wretch

Ebony woke up from a blissful sleep, by far the best she'd had since she'd been exiled from Absinthe. She found herself in midnight blue sheets, laying on a bed almost as soft as the one she'd had back in the castle.

All she wanted to do was sleep--be it through night or day, she didn't want to leave the bed.

Someone then entered the room, and Ebony groaned and put a pillow over her head. But as soon as she remembered what had happened she allowed the pillow to be removed by a pudgy hand.

"Miss Ebony," a stout and heavy man addressed her, carrying what seemed to be medical supplies. "I'm here to check on your wounds."

"That's Princess Ebony to you," she corrected, nevertheless allowing him to examine her heavily bruised side. Even though she'd been exiled from Absinthe, she was still their princess.

The physician pulled out a roll of bandages from his case, asking her to sit up so he could wrap them around her. Ebony obliged as well as she could, needing a little assistance to rise with his help.

Her wound ached horribly, yet the pain was not as dreadful as what she'd experienced yesterday. She was grateful it was already healing.

Then she remembered what had caused her to end up there--she'd grabbed the attention of none other than the Prince of Death himself, only to lose conscience from the wound she'd received. Her cheeks colored with anger. She never felt that way after having that kind of an injury, and was usually able to easily handle the pain. But that... fainting from only that? Something was wrong.

The physician rubbed a salve over her bandages, and Ebony winced at the contact, the salve getting into her wound. But she gritted her teeth and endured the pain. She'd survived seventeen years of her miserable life already, she could get through a little stinging. But it seemed like her pain tolerance had dropped low since she left Absinthe.

"Where is the Prince?" She asked the physician as he finished his work and began packing up.

"I know no Prince," he chuckled. "But the one who sent me is currently tending to... other things."

Ebony didn't know how to respond to that, so she let the physician leave with thanks and no further questioning. She did want to know whatever it was that the Prince was doing, but the physician seemed to not want to talk further about the subject. She also wanted to get going immediately. Maybe once we retrieve the heart I can return to my normal life, she thought hopefully.

But it would take a lot to get Crimson to go back on her decree. And Crimson still despised her. Like she always had since the accident.

It had been five years ago, when Crimson was fourteen and Ebony twelve. Their father, after falling into a drunken rage, had taken out his wrath on his daughters.

"Father, you need to stop drinking," Ebony had pleaded, trying to take a large bottle of strong ichor from his huge, meaty hands.

He didn't listen. "I'll tell myself when I need to stop!" He roared, shoving a crying Ebony to the ground.

Crimson entered the room, hearing all the commotion, and saw her father looming over his daughter, ready to strike.

"You filthy little wretch," he snarled, holding a now empty ichor bottle over his head. "You need to be taught a lesson."

And he brought the bottle down. But the head he hit wasn't Ebony's.

Crimson pushed Ebony aside, screaming at her father. "LEAVE HER ALONE!"

And her father hit her head so hard she fell unconscious. "BITCH!!!" He screamed.

Ebony heard a large crack and blood the color of Crimson's name began mixing in with her fiery red hair and onto the floor.

The father noticed this and left the room, not wanting to bear responsibility, cursing. Ebony rushed over to her sister's side and screamed when she saw the wound.

Green glass from the now shattered bottle stuck out like stalagmites from her head. Ebony could see down to her skull, which had a large crack in it. As Ebony sobbed, covering her sister's heavily bleeding head with fabric she tore from her skirts a servant came in the room.

"Go get the physicians!" She screamed.

No more than a minute later they entered the room and Ebony was pulled away from a blur of people panicking and trying to fix the wound. They enclosed her in her room and Ebony crashed into her bed with a spread of all sorts of pillows and blankets and sobbed until she was too exhausted to move. That night was when Ebony began to hate blood--in any form.

Weeks passed, leading up to months. Crimson was still in the nursing ward.

Ebony came to visit her often, crying and holding one of her hands. Once red, they were now a deathly pale that resembled Ebony's own skin.

The physicians said she was in a coma. "We have no idea when or if she'll wake up," they told her. "But she's alive, and that's a miracle as far as we're concerned."

She was told to be grateful she'd survived, but all Ebony felt was hollow. Crimson wasn't alive, not really--she was stuck in a sleep that could have been endless.

And each day it was harder and harder to keep living with that burden. She found herself no longer motivated to continue learning or participate in any court activities, and when her father fell into another one of his drunken rages she killed him. She kept a knife with her and cut her father's head clean off in one sweep, ending his never-ending wrath. Not a word of the events left the castle.

Then her sister woke up. The court was filled with joy, and everyone celebrated as Crimson finally left the bed she'd resided in for nearly a year now.

But she wasn't the same. Her sister wasn't the warm, kind person Ebony's once known. Replaced by her was a cruel shadow--someone who would grow up to be the most despicable and evil person to ever hold Absinthe's throne.

But all the while, enduring Crimson's wrath and love of ichor horribly similar to that of her father's, Ebony was grateful at last. Her sister was now truly alive, even if she wasn't the same as she had once been. Even through all the changes, she was still her sister, and Ebony still loved her.

But up until her exile she'd thought her sister felt the same.