A KINGDOM UNDONE , original

one

[ AMAYA HALE ]
[ ACT ONE: THE BLOOD MOON ]

There was something about the owl hooting away in the forest that made Amaya chuckle as blood trickled from her nose.
Maybe it was the noise in an otherwise calm place that made her mind go wild and the sounds come out of her throat or maybe it was the way she lay there on the muddy ground, alone and dying that felt funny to her.

She wasn't dying. It would be a long time before she would die, she knew that. He knew that. Yet, as he ran towards her, shouting her name in a panic, she thought maybe this time it would be different. Maybe she would close her eyes and go away.

Amaya didn't hear the owl anymore as she stared at the dark sky and the grey clouds, hiding away a crescent moon from shining its light onto her. She only heard his voice. His soft, gentle voice willing her to be helped. Willing her to live. She wanted to shout at him, wanted him off of her as he cradled her in his arms and thought back to how all this happened.

Before she closed her eyes and hummed that song they used to play, she whispered his name and held onto him like her life depended on it. For all they knew, it very well could be.

He shouted at the guards to stay away from her as his brown eyes roamed her healing body, the dried blood sticking to her skin and the leaves in her tousled light brown hair. Her eyes closed, she whispered his name again and found his voice in her ear once more, begging in her mind for it to never stop as he told her it would be okay.

How was this all happening? How did it come to this? Why was there blood? How did she fall? Falling, she found freeing. What she didn't find freeing was crashing to the earth like a meteorite and bleeding, breaking bones and her vision blurring. Amaya opened her eyes as his hands cleared the leaves out of her hair and found his dark brown eyes, still wandering all over, yet always being on her own eyes. She found it unnerving. How dare he sit here and pick the leaves out of her hair, holding her and whispering sweet, sweet things to her. Promises.

Promises, she found were easy made. Because they were so very easy to break. And he did. He broke his oath made to her on a holy night and she still wanted him with her, holding her and caressing her cheek as he did now.

How did this happen? How did she fall? Why was she, yet again, so very angry at him that it hurt? Because she wanted him. And he wanted her. Almost like magnets. Almost. Because when magnets of the same polarity come together, they repel each other. They were like that. Bound to be together only to be driven away. And they hated it.

꧁⸻꧂

Amaya woke with a start in their bed. He was sleeping next to her and she found herself clean and healed in her nightgown underneath a blanket. Not an unusual sight for her that he was there but it unnerved nonetheless. She was still angry at him.

She knew now why she was out there. She knew now that time was a cruel thing and would loathe it even more. She lay back down and watched him sleep, his brown hair tousled, his hand outstretched to where own had lain and his even breathing, his chest going up and down.

Amaya had been running. She had no destination in mind yet she ran and leaped only once in the air when her mind seemed to explode. For a moment, she was hovering in the air, looking back at the castle she'd run away from and then she was falling with an eerie shrill in her mind and foggy images. Sebastian. Her eyes wandered to the man next to her.

It has been a month since Amaya had accepted her fate and come here. And was made a fool of.

She was never gonna be accepted as their Queen, yet they had no other one waiting in a closet and had no time to waste. While Amaya was revilas like them, she was more human than anything. Being born and raised on Earth for more than twenty years would do that.

She raised a hand to his face, watching him like he was her favorite thing in the world that she couldn't help but want to know more. Before she could've placed her fingers on his cheek, she felt a cold electricity run through the air and pulled her hand back just when Sophia Chamberlain appeared in the doorframe. The two women were in direct eye sights of the other and Amaya sighed softly, pulling herself away from the man.

Getting up from the bed and walking towards Sophia without so much as a sound proved difficult as she didn't want to wake him but not impossible. Amaya followed Sophia outside and into the latter's bedchambers.

There, she rushed a hand through her hair and stretched before sitting up straight in Sophia's vanity chair, turning to the dark haired woman.
"Running away, really?" Sophia spoke, rubbing her eyes after probably having pulled an all-nighter. Sophia tended to Amaya like a second mother and cared for her as such. "I don't like it here." Amaya said as if she were a child forced to come to vacation.

"Well, sadly, it doesn't matter what you like." Sophia pulled out a heavy, black bound book and opened it on a bookmarked page. "Amaya, I'm sorry." The brunette looked up in suprise from the vanity where her long fingers played with a black eyeliner pencil. Sorry. No one's told her they were sorry that she was brought here.

Amaya was summoned with a letter. To leave her life behind, to stop mourning the loss of her mother and pack her things to get here. Alpha. It was a planet in a faraway galaxy, at least she wants to believe that. Alpha is only reached by portal magic. Alpha harbored witches, called revilas that drew their power from the moon and a magical source hidden away beneath the earth.

"Me too." She whispered and release the eyeliner pen back onto the table. "I'm sorry that it's you. And I'm sorry about Sebastian. Whatever else happens, he will protect you." Amaya let out a bitter chuckle and looked at the raven haired revilas behind her through the mirror. "I can protect myself." At that, Sophia raised a black, thin eyebrow and her blue-green eyes shone bright with curiosity under long, black lashes.

"On Earth, most definitely. There, you're the most powerful being to ever walk. Here, you are a preschooler. John is more powerful than you." She said it almost tauntingly and Amaya's eyes flickered, switched dangerously between her brown doe eyes and a golden shimmer laying over her irises. She felt a surge of energy in her chest and tried hard to keep it contained. When her eyes fell one of Sophia's photos pinned to the vanity, her breathing hitched for a moment.

John Craven, the aforementioned only slightly stronger revilas, and her have been friends all her life. In the photo, they were sitting at the top of a staircase. John was wearing a white shirt and black pants, fitting for the party they were attending, his brown hair cut short and the silver ring on his pinky. Amaya was sitting next to him, knees hugged to her chest, wearing a long, dark blue dress with a jacket, John's jacket, over her shoulders. They were smiling and holding champagne glasses. The glasses were rimmed with a golden powder and their light around them was tinged in an orange light.

Amaya didn't remember what they were talking about that night. So much had happened. That night, that fateful blood moon, Sebastian was crowned king and there was a party to celebrate. Of course, John had invited Amaya. There was no other way he'd attend.

It's where John had introduced Amaya to Sebastian. He'd asked her to dance immediately and Amaya, being daughter of the old Queen, couldn't say no. They talked about her coming there but she politely declined. And now here she was. Three weeks later. Amaya shook her head and turned around to Sophia. "Maybe." Amaya told her.

Three weeks ago, Amaya received the letter, opened a portal with the little magic she had left and found herself before the court inside the castle. She remembered them saying being a daughter of a queen was the reason why she should be the next. Amaya held on three weeks as she was trained before last night, she ran away.

"We're sleeping in the same bed now." She told Sophia, painfully stating the obvious. Sophia nodded at her as she stopped reading. "I know." She told the younger woman. "I have to tell you something." Amaya whispered. It was painfully clear, yet she had to say it. Speak about it with someone "The Council said we're to be married by the next blood moon." Sophia looked up, a flicker of recognition in her eyes, just as her hand was hovering over a magical symbol in the book. "I know. I was the one suggesting a union."