Villainous [Wattys 2021 Shortlist]

MALEVOLENT 20: Omen

She couldn't go in.

Delilah stood in the entrance chamber shaking like a leaf, furiously willing her legs to move and failing.

There was definitely something wrong with her. She tried to conjure the ice-cold clarity she had felt after saving Kiri from the river, tried to focus on what being strong would get her: the crown. Do it for the crown. Go in for the crown. Play your cards right and you might not have to marry him...

For the crown.

When she went deep inside herself, stripped away all the outer layers to find the very core of herself, she hit molten ambition, the stuff that had fuelled her and driven her all her life. Where had it come from? Tiberius? Had he really been the source of all of this, placed it inside her when she was so young she could barely remember? No, she refused to believe something like this was her uncle's doing.

Old sounds and sights enveloped her.

*

The five-year-old toddled along on chubby legs, trying to catch up to her older brother. He was always faster than her, but she knew that if she just kept running, she could beat him somehow. The two children tore through bushes and wound around the paths of the garden in the height of summer, relishing being alone, because no courtiers came out when the sun was so high and scorching in the sky.

Suddenly the little prince stopped, and the princess tore ahead of him with a shriek of delight.

"Wait, Lila!" he called, but she ignored him. She never won! Only when he let her, and she could tell when he was pretending. She wanted to win for real. "Lila, we can't go that way!"

She had found an open door at the end of the path, assumed that was the finish line, and ran over it so fast she felt like her toes barely touched the ground. She hurtled into a cool room, dark compared to the brightness of outside, and before her eyes could adjust, her foot caught on a loose flagstone. Crying out, she went tumbling head over heels into the middle of the room.

Grown-up voices halted and papers shuffled as she rolled before hitting the ground with a loud smack. Delilah looked up and realised she had run right into the middle of the Forbidden Room, where Father went to conduct his daily work which they never told her about. Sometimes Marko went with him, but they had never let Delilah in yet.

Stuffy-looking men sat at tables lining the room, frowning at her, and a sense of importance charged the air. It smelled unfamiliar to her, dusty with vellum. Delilah stood up, scanning for Father. There he was! He always was given the best, most finely-carved chair, and a crown of pure gold sat on his head.

"Daddy!" She stumbled towards him, forgetting the pain of her fall immediately.

That most beloved face closed off like shutters had been drawn over it, and he turned his face away as if... embarrassed. Other men tutted and muttered things that did not sound pleasant. A strange feeling washed over Delilah, something she picked up on even if she did not understand it. Why didn't Father run to her with open arms? She wanted nothing more than to hug him, enfold herself in his bear-like embrace, bury her face in his chest and breathe his smell. She wanted his strong hands to hold her and his kiss to graze her head. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had done that, and the desire for it burned through everything the terrifying Governess had ever tried to teach her.

But he still looked... embarrassed. Why was her face heating up, why did she get the sense that she did not belong? Her throat began to constrict. Didn't he realise, hadn't the Governess told him, that she was constantly escaping her tutors and running through the palace just so she could find him? Just so she could get to him before he disappeared behind the Forbidden Doors? Why did it seem like he didn't love her?

Then she noticed a figure robed in blue, flanked by two white individuals, the central one's veil hanging over its face. She recognised the Anloch colours.

She changed direction, wondering if there was anyone familiar beneath the veil, any love that could come pouring out. She couldn't remember her mother's face, but she had a vague memory of it as a baby... She'd come back! She was going to take Delilah away from this hot and closed-in place and take her to her watery dreamland, the place they'd told Delilah she had come from and then so mysteriously returned to. She hadn't forgotten about Delilah at all, or stopped loving her, like the courtiers' scary children always told her when they saw her. Her mother had come back because she loved her child, and finally Delilah was going to get what the other children sneered about: a mother.

"Mama?"

Chairs screeched as they scraped against stone and people moved.

"Get her out of here," Gaol said in a low voice. "We cannot let anything disrupt the peace treaty with Anloch."

"If they remember how badly your marriage to the queen ended, sire..."

"Go. Now."

Someone hoisted her up, hands around her middle, and Delilah screamed and thrashed. They squeezed too hard, it hurt.

"Mama! No! Mama!" she cried, but the person was big and strong and easily able to carry her away...

Where the door slammed in her face and behind her loomed the unforgiving horned shadow of the Governess.

*

Shaking with excitement, the girl stood outside the grand doors as older men filed in, none of them sparing her a glance. She had been stuck alone with the terrifying masked Governess for so long, and finally, they were letting her in. This was all she had ever wanted.

Her brother was last in the line, tall and straight-backed, a circlet upon his burnished hair, looking every bit like the young prince.

Delilah ran to his side and giddily grabbed his arm on the way in.

"Don't cling to me," he chided. "Don't walk with round shoulders, either."

"Why not?"

"Don't embarrass me in here, Delilah."

Delilah, not Lila, he'd said. He was treating her like a child, like he was superior, and heat shot through her.

"Why would I embarrass you? What do you mean?" She tried and failed to swallow the whine in her voice.

"Leave me alone - they'll judge me."

Why would anyone judge the perfect prince?

They filed in and Delilah watched the men taking their places, lingering by the walls when they finally let her over the threshold last. Of course she had to be the last in line, as the only woman in the room.

"Stand to one side," a councilman ordered, "and don't say anything. This is important business."

"All rise for the entrance of His Royal Highness King Gaol Coppin of the Fire Throne, Flame of the South, Sovereign of the Sunbeam Nation!"

When the meeting started, Delilah drank in every word greedily. Trouble was brewing in the south... A famed explorer had gone searching for the Lost Mirridian Baths and been captured by the Kahnti Tribe, who were interrogating him for news of the north and none too kindly... The citizens of the Yumin Peninsula feared invasion from their wilder neighbours, the Sohmneta, and they were clamouring for aid from the crown, but if the crown responded they may make enemies of the Sohmneta, who were growing ever more powerful... Worst of all, King Vallahan had refused to show up for a peace embassy led by Empress Lin of Terra, and Lin had contacted Gaol out of concern because trade shipments had started going missing in the north...

Her feet cramped, bringing her out of her own head, and she realised over an hour had passed.

"Fetch me water, girl," a grizzled-looking man sat nearby ordered.

Did he really think she was a servant? She stared, amazed. The water jug wasn't that far away, and she was the only one on her feet...

"Marko, what do you think?" Gaol asked his son.

"Water, girl," the man snapped, and Delilah missed Marko's response.

Delilah's ears began to burn as she moved towards the jug, very aware that she was heading to the centre of the room without being invited, with more and more eyes landing on her, and hating it.

At the same time, she felt a downwards twisting and tugging at her insides. It was so sudden and violent, like a blunt blade ripping through her, and she almost dropped the jug, catching it at the last minute and shakily putting it back. The pain knifed into her back and between her legs.