be the sun as my witness

Oneshot

She knows she's not her parents' real daughter; they've made that abundantly clear from day one, still a child of eight years old.

Many years ago, the Count Louis of Foix received news that his wife, the Countess Anne of d'Etoiles-Foix, was infertile, he despaired. Many long nights of drinking, of nights full of nightmares not leaving a legacy behind - of having to adopt his brother's children as his heirs, something that deeply revolted him, refusing to accept a gaggle of bastards to run his state after he died, all controlled by women drunk with power, a mirror of his own terrible childhood - and a tumble in bed with a maid later brought him a solution, by the same lips of the woman he had an affair with. She told him, in low, hushed tones, of the gods in the woods, of altars drenched in blood and guts, grounds littered with small bones, of exchanges.

"That's how my sister got her second husband." She whispered, dressed in moonlight. "She traded something for it, never told me what. Some blood in the altar, and nothing more was thought of it."

The man was desperate enough to take his wife and follow the maid on a night of full moon, a lamb under their arm bleating softly. She guided them to an altar in the woods, stone dark and soaked with dried blood, and her whispered words guided them as she slashed the lamb's throat.

The rest was history: their youngest for the god, her fertility gained in exchange, the trade valid when the child was eighteen, when the god would take it to his realm. They proceeded to have four healthy children: Charles, Louise, Agnes, Phillipe, and no kid had anything of ill health, not even a toothache.

Then, by the time Phillipe was two, Louis sent off Anne to the countryside, claiming she was having a high-risk pregnancy and needed to rest. It was an excuse; there was never a countryside to go to, Anne simply went traveling using a disguise, enjoying life away from the children: she had always claimed to be unfit for raising children, and this was her reward for bearing four just for Louis. The ruse was also one they needed.

Louis was a smart man, studied the law and knew its loopholes. The god that had granted them four children said their youngest to my realm, and Phillipe, his blood, his spare heir, would not be the blood price, sent off to marriage or whatever death awaited him. So if they adopted a child, and it was younger than any of his kids, then wouldn't that little bastard be the youngest by definition? And, of course, he couldn't let it run wild, so it had to be trained well enough to pass in court. They'd claim that the pregnancy had left Anne weak, so she would rest in the countryside, and the babe would be too sickly to travel while young, or maybe even forever: he didn't want his children to grow attached to someone that would invariably die. The servants were paid handsomely for their silence in these delicate matters, and when the right time came, the child would become the youngest, and his actual blood children would be safe.

He still remembered the god in the woods: more beast than man, looking with eyes that seemed red in moonlight down on them, horns curling towards the full moon.

He would not subject his children to that blood-thirsty god.

Psyche didn't always used to be Psyche.

She used to be called Thérèse, a name as simple as her origins, a life with hard bread and the sun shining on her skin, living under the leaky roof of the local orphanage. She collected mushrooms in the nearby forest, said hello to the dryads that lived in the shade of oak trees, asked for the water nymphs permission before diving in their lakes. It was a good life, the taste of winter berries and summer fruit heavy on her tongue, rain on her hair and the sun in her eyes.

Of course everyone knew of the beings in the forest, the protectors and gods that lied in the shade: they protected the villagers, gave them food and aid.