I wake to find the beautiful purple sky of my bedroom ceiling above me.
I don't remember going to my room or falling asleep, grandma but be stronger than she looks if she carried me all the way up the stairs. I chuckled to myself before clambering out of the tightly tucked, warm bed covers and heading for the bathroom.
"I think I will try that hose thing today" I was still talking to myself, the stress of the almost marriage must have really gotten to me but continued on my merry way towards the bathroom. Locking the door and stripping off, I stood in the bath and pressed a button on the large dial causing rain to fall from the sky.....inside.
"Earth has so many strange contraptions", I mumbled as I washed myself under the hot rain. After standing under the water till my fingers began to wrinkle I stepped out and headed back into my own room to find another set of overly tight clothing in my wardrobe. This time the bottoms were slightly easier to get on and I could sit down today, so rather than dwelling on my poor wardrobe selection I took my good mood downstairs to greet grandma who was looking worried at the tiny kitchen table. As soon as I walking in she shot up out of her chair and hurriedly pushed me down into the other.
"You are in serious danger my child" her voice was a rough whisper, as though she had been up worrying all night.
"But how can I be in danger grandma, I came through the Twist to be safe." this was not news I wanted to hear on such a beautiful day.
"I got news from the current Dimension Keeper early this morning, someone was allowed to pass through the portal from Syltyn to Earth for free."
"Free! but grandma, I thought everyone had to pay the fine, I did?"
"You did indeed, the only reason one can cross the veil between our two dimensions is if you have been sent by the King"
"The King?," My voice broke from fear, "Well who would Diorten send, a toll, a goblin, one of the soldiers?"
"Yes, but I am afraid he did not send a mersinary, it is far worse, he has sent an Assassin, he has sent Kailen."I managed to suck in so much air I nearly fainted, "No grandma they can't have, not Kailen!", panic filled me as the tears began to flow, pouring in silver drops down my cheeks to land on the wooden floor below.
Grandma said nothing, instead she pulled me into a hard hug.
Kailen is the best Assassin in the entirety of Syltyn, though others would say different. He is feared by everyone and is the most secretive and ruthless of them all. No one knows who he is, or how old. Is he a twenty year old soldier? A thirty year old goblin? Immortal? No one but a few the guards at the palace know for sure and anyone who does know, isn't willing to share. He has killed many an unworthy King in my world as well as many rich noblemen, but it is said his one goal in being an Assassin, is to hunt down kill a Royal with a bounty on their heads.
I was going to be that Royal.
It set in then, all that fear I had bottled up for all those years, everything suddenly came back and I froze, my eyes locked on grandma's, "I don't want to die grandma" it came out as a squeeky whisper but it was all I could manage; the tears and the fear had clogged my throat and I could hardly breath.
After ten minutes of grandma soothing me by stroking my hair I had calmed enough to regain rational thought, grandma leapt up from her seat and startled me before dashing around the kitchen.
"Right, we need to make you look like someone else, someone mortal, and we shall start with your hair."She rummaged around in a kitchen draw and pulled out a flawless steel dagger with a ruby encrusted handle, "My dear Arabella I was going to give this to you on your eighteenth birthday, but I will give it to you now; please always keep it on you. Its job shall be to protect you, and it will start now..." she stepped around the back of the wooden kitchen chair I was sitting at and pulled my long dark hair over the back. With a quiet regretful sigh she cleanly cut off two feet of hair and left the remainder sitting just above my shoulders. I gasped and watched my beautiful hair fall to the floor around me. Grandma came walking back around to face me with the rest of my hair still in her hands. "You always did have beautiful hair my dear Ella, but this would have given you away too easily." She stroked it slightly as she did when I was a child, before setting it on one kitchen table and sat back down. She clutched my hands infront of her and rubbed her corse thumb over my knuckles, "Kailen has already passed through the Twist, he is already here in Tylside, so we need to turn you into a regular sixteen year old girl and girls go to school."
"School!" I spat out with discusst, peasants in Syltyn were never allowed to go to school.
"Yes my dear, school. And tomorrow happens to be your first day and you shall be there"
"Bu-"
"No buts!" She snapped putting a finger to my lips, " you are going to school as Ella Baxter tomorrow and that is final, if you want to live long enough to see seventeen you will have to trust me and go to school."My mind was spinning, school, no one went to school back home, we were all home tutored, and short hair was a sign of being poor. But there was one problem with being normal, and and that was that I didn't look normal, " grandma, what am I going to do about my black eyes?"...
YOU ARE READING
Twisted Worlds
FantasyOnce Upon a time, there was a Princess..... Oh who am I kidding, my story is not a fairy tale. My name is Arabella and I am a run-away princess, if arranged marriages weren't bad enough, I have an assassin on my tail and Dimension Keepers to make de...