A Queens Sorrow

Chapter 19: Changes

They threw heather down onto the sandy ground...

The pain and grunt that followed not only sounded full of anguish but it felt that way as well. The ropes still tight as she tried to quietly struggle to get free. The sack on her head reeked of blood and sweat. And not her own.

She sat up right, the cloth tent flourishing lightly, drifting back and forth on and off, back and forth on the pre hammer wooden pegs that held it in pace, she paused as it shifted in the cold desert breeze, "its nighttime" heather thought, the realization being quite knowledgeable she was proud. Her dagger still brandished at her side, hilted just enough... maybe enough to finally break free.

"Tie her to the post, and take her dagger". Yelled Carson, his voice booming with pure disdain and rage.

His lowly thugs grabbed me up from underneath my arms, lifted me off the ground and tied me to a large pole that seemed wooden but also standardized with small nails on the back and front, obviously meant for the purpose of torturing the captives. Lifting off the drenched sack before walking away back towards their individualized blustering homesteads.

" What happened to the man I loved..." heather blurted in quick succession, her voice cracking with the dehydration that held her tongue at gunpoint, laughing at it as she grew more and more parched. Her eyes still closed as to not look him directly in his gorgeous eyes, she heard his footsteps halt in the sandy undergrowth, "He died along with his kingdom". She was surprised, not just at his change of heart but at his pugnacious quip that followed.

Heather felt a tear fall from her right eye, the man she loved was gone. He was either a larger than life farce, or a insecure plant to get her to trust him in exchange for information on her and her parents and her newly owned kingdom.

She needed a plan. And a plan she had. She would wait for the next nightfall to come and make an escape, she follow the sandy dunes back south in the direction of her castle, and she'd apologize for being late to her wedding...

But that was for tomorrow. Tonight she'd realize the tears that had been shed for him, the old him, were in vain, he never loved her, he only wanted to continue portraying a loving, hunk of a man, so he acted disappointed and scared and left her to be captured by her old friend...heather felt stupid for trusting someone so handsome, so muscular, so revoltingly caring. She had waited a long time to find someone who actually loved her for her and she thought she had found it in him. But it turns out she had not.

so she'd sit here, counting the strange not heat related mirages that passed her by in the freezing air with no fire and no comfort, the nails on the wooden post almost breaking the skin if she relaxed too far, too deep, too long.

Heather needed rest so finally ignoring the blood dripping off the rusted brown nails, that now pushed past the outer layers of skin, she fell asleep and waited patiently for a new nightfall to come.