The Executioner's Wife

The Three Nights

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Lily did not want to be queen.

At first, she planned to run away. But the steel and swords of the guards convinced her otherwise. They were posted at nearly every entrance and exit, at the windows, and outside of her new bedroom door. It was likely they had been doubled since her arrival. She didn't think they would kill her since the king was oddly determined to marry her; but she didn't want to be placed under heavier security and reduce her chances of escape even further.

She thought about jumping out of her window, but her room was on the third floor. The ground below was a hard dirt patch, littered with sharp rocks and soil. Beyond that was the sea, an endless expanse of blue that reflected the sun and the moon like a rippling mirror. She'd have to run back around the castle to make it to town and find Alois- but that would take even more planning to evade the guards posted at the roots of the massive stone structure. If she tried to calculate the injuries, she felt the awful pain of broken legs and arms like phantoms of the future. Even if she landed perfectly, there was no way she wouldn't at least twist something. She thought about using one of her bedsheets as a parachute, or twisting them into a rope- but when she went to pull back the cover, there were no sheets, and the cover was not enough to land safely. Besides, even if she landed with minimal injury, avoided the guards, and made it home, the king would surely send forces after them. And where could they go, that the king had no access to? They'd be taken back and separated again, for whatever foul purpose the king had hidden, perhaps at an even worse consequence than before.

Lily even wondered if she could just refuse to marry the king. She planned to say that God had also visited her in a dream and said that she would have to be returned to her husband- or else the king would have hell to pay. But she didn't think the king would agree with her. It seemed the God that lived in his mind dominated all other reason and perspective. And she didn't want to risk him taking out his unholy anger on Alois. The king had not even paid her a visit since the divorce paper was signed. Whether it was to preserve the sanctity of their wedding day, or he'd forgotten about her, Lily couldn't tell. Truthfully, it didn't matter.

In the hellish seventy-two hours before the wedding, Lily sat alone with her thoughts and the unbelievable reality she was living in. Her new bedroom was a blazing furnace of red and orange tapestry, decked with luxurious bear skins and childlike statues holding up tables, and highlighted by an ivory and ebony chess set on a delicate cherrywood desk. The room lead to a small bathroom with a wide, gold tub with curled clawfeet perching it over the tile like a kneeling tiger. But the whole room was ugly to her- even the most expensive and nobly decorated palace in the world would be ugly without Alois in it.

Lily spent the days there, as her waitstaff came and went to dress and feed her. Her new servants presented her with silk, soft dresses that captured her waist and flowed over her hips. She did not want them. Her new chefs provided steaming hot delicacies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, fresh fish with lemon squeeze and caviar, and cherry ice cream with gold glaze. She could hardly eat. Her maids helped her with her hair, trying to figure out her twists with the confused determination of children assembling a puzzle. She thanked them for the effort but sent them away. The days were long and lonely. 

Nighttime was the worst because the silence introduced something that Lily had never feared as much as she did now. Her anxious brain, without Alois to neutralize it, unleashed its full potential. Between her tears and unfulfilled schemes to escape, she believed she was losing her mind. Her imagination animated a lifetime locked in the castle, a stiff mannequin propped in imported dresses and nightgowns for the king's unwanted pleasure- or worse. What exactly was he planning to do with her? Would she be his testimony to the God that raged behind his eyes? Was she meant to be some type of sacrifice- is that why he had sentenced his last wife to death? Would he pass down the same punishment to her seconds after they said their vows? A sharp knife of fear pierced her heart as she thought of another horrible possibility. She nearly vomited at the idea of the king dispatching his older wife for a new younger one just for the sake of children. She wouldn't give him the chance. She'd end it all before he would produce more of himself through her.