A KINGDOM OF DEAD HEARTS [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER 23: THE BROKEN GIRL

The bath was outside her room, in a small wooden cottage in the corner of the stone building she was in.

She looked around, and the place – it looked like a massive kitchen – was busy with palace maids who were preparing food, washing, and cleaning. The stone building that her room was in apparently was the maid's quarter. There were more rooms like hers, smaller even. Her room was for someone like Prissa, a sort of manager for the maids.

Prissa helped her with preparing for bath, even though Airin absolutely insisted the chambermaid was out of the bath place when she was in the tub. She still wanted her privacy.

Bath was nice. The water was warm, the warmth that helped her relax her muscles a little bit.

She soaked herself in the wooden tub, folding her knees to fit in there, though she definitely could not sink her whole body in there, but she did not mind.

After bath, Prissa had prepared some clothes for her. Some long-sleeve shirts and skirts, from thick material to counter the winter cold. But Airin's mind was too busy to care. She mindlessly wore the clothes, went back to her room with Prissa still close by, the maids who passed by them would slow their steps, stare at her, and keep going again, whispering to one another.

She let Prissa braid her hair to one tail-like braid, while she was busy looking around. Winter was definitely here. The sun hid behind the clouds, and the snow was beautiful. White, gentle, and so quiet.

Prissa went to notify the palace officials that she had awakened, leaving Airin by herself in her room. She scanned the garden, and she saw someone there.

On a bench, in the middle of the garden, was a young woman. She had on her black cape, black dress, which made her quite visible from Airin's window.

The young woman just sat and stared head, her cape's hood covered her head. She looked like one black spot in the middle of pure white snow. She stayed still even when some birds flew around her.

Sitting stiffbacked and staring straight ahead, that was all she was doing. Her hands were clasped on her lap.

Who is she? Why would she just sit and stare ahead like that? The questions toyed in Airin's mind.

"That is Elisthia," Prissa's voice startled her.

She turned and saw her chambermaid had entered the room again, now standing, staring straight at the woman in black whom she called Elisthia.

"Elisthia? Who is she?" Airin genuinely wanted to know.

"She is ... well, was ... an apprentice of Nydda. An orphan whom Nydda rescued from the street when she was a child. Nydda saw a great talent in her to be a sorceress, a successor for Nydda. She trained for years with Nydda on sorcery, herbal skills, medicine. A happy, gentle young woman ..." Prissa stopped to sigh, and continued,"We used to chat a lot. She changed after the war with Myrana ..." Prissa sounded sad, her sentences tinged with a shiver, clearly she was trying to speak normally despite tears that threatened to burst out. She took a long, deep, heavy breath without taking her gaze away from Elisthia.

"What has happened to her?" whispered Airin.

"War, Miss. We do not know what exactly happened. One morning she was fine, then by sunset she had turned ... like that. She must have witnessed something, or many things, that were so callous, so brutal that it broke her completely. She is now broken, lost somewhere in her thought. She never speaks, never does anything other than sitting there on that bench," Prissa's gaze lingered on Elisthia as she spoke again,"The same bench Nydda and her would have their sorcery lessons and talks. Even Nydda had given up trying to talk with her. She did not even seem to acknowledge her mentor, the one who was like a parent to her, the one she loved and respected so much."