Once upon a broken princess

Chapter 3

Bellona woke up on the could floor. She looked around hoping it was all a nightmare. She hopes to have woken up in her chamber, on her fluffy bed. But she was there, in a big room smelling of death and destruction.
A/N: mention of bl∆∆d.
Her heart was beating faster than ever, she could even clearly hear it as well. She reached for the wound that was supposed to be on her neck but it was fully healed.
Her sight was clearer than she could imagine someone vision could be. There was another strange sensation on her body. She felt exhausted, a weird tiredness only eating would ease. But she didn't feel hungry for food, the stains on the carpet looked enticing which made her question if she was loosing her mind.

She got up and manged to walk to one of the bathrooms, nearly tripping over a corpse on the way. She looked at herself in the round-golden-framed mirror. Saying she looked different would be an understatement. She looked almost as Castor did when she last saw him, just barely a bit more human. She has the urge to both scream and cry so she choose neither. She just stood there, heavily breathing over the sink.

From what she could make out it was night, perhaps just before the sun came up. A thousand questions were plaguing her mind. Had it been a full day since the scandal? What had happened to the rest of her family? To Lala? Where is Jacks? How many people had her twin brother killed? What was he? And was she being consumed by the same darkness?

Suddenly, she heard footsteps in the room she had been before. Inhumane, quick footsteps. She grabbed a dagger she found on one of the corpses and decided to face him.
Castor looked shocked to see her,his once pastel colored robes were now maroon-stained.
"Bellona, you are alive?" He asked, as she stood opposite him holding the dagger in his direction.
"I don't know, you tell me" she challenged.

"I still don't know much about myself either so I suppose we should figure this out together" he seemed calmer now, his urge for blood gone.

"Figure what out?! You are a monster! And I might be becoming one as well"
Her voice breaking.

"I regret all the things I have done. But I cannot erase them. This is all because of our mother not of me" he confessed.

"What about her?" She still held the tagger tightly, ready to attack.

"I tried to warn Lyric of Vengeance's attack but I got here too late. He stabbed me and as weird as it sounds...I am pretty sure I died. Jacks found me, he brought me to mother and she managed to revive me, I guess that has its consequences"
He explained.

Bellona stayed quiet, analyzing how that spell might have worked and how the consequences align with it.

"All I have been craving is blood ever since. Other people already have been calling me monster..."
He looked down, the sadness in his emerald eyes obvious.

"And what about me?! What on earth have done to me, Castor?!"she demanded.

"I don't know. I don't. I never meant to hurt you, I just couldn't control myself"
He cried.

"I believe you, I suppose. I just don't how this whole thing works. I don't wanna be like you. Do you have any idea what I am supposed to do?" She lowered the dagger.

"No, mother said that I should drink human blood to complete my transformation. I don't know what will happen to you if you don't. You case might different than mine"

"Oh, wonderful",tears begun escaping her eyes.

"But you could figure something out, you know magic better than I do"

"I don't think there is anything to reverse it. And I might die if I don't drink blood or I might not. I am not sure if I just wanna wait around to figure that out though" she shrugged.

"It's your choice to make"

"I suppose so. But I don't have too much time, do I?"

"No, and I should mention that we can't go outside during the day. It burned my skin when I tried" he informed her.

"That's the price of immortality" she jocked through her tears.
He nodded, unable to find the right words.

A/N: body organs and bl∆∆d.

"Well brother, I guess you'll need someone to look after you while you while you butcher the entire world for all eternity"
And just like that she used her supernatural strength to rip out the heart of one of Lala's relatives to drink the remaining blood that still existed there. She wasn't sure about the decision she was making. But leaving such a monster alone in the world seemed like a cruel thing. Both for him and the people around him.

She felt her fangs expand and a peculiar euphoria taking over as she swallowed it.
"It's disgusting" the flavor wasn't at what she expected. It tasted nothing like meat. More like dread and metal blades.
"I promise you, fresh blood is better"
"Shut up!" She threw the heart amongst the bodies.
"Lyric?" She asked, failing to find his body.
"I buried him. And I actually came back here to burry you" Castor confessed, closing the curtains in the room as the sun was coming up.
"Ah, how touching to know that my brother that killed me wanted to grant me a burial" she shot a fake smile at him, securing that dagger underneath her skirts.
He made a sound as if ready to defend himself but she interrupted him.
"Save it. I know"
They eventually walked to a different room, a living room, with soft couches and a huge library. The windows were thankfully completely sealed and so they sat next to each other. Staining the floral design red.
"So, do you have any idea what has happened to our family?"
"They locked themselves up forever. Mother put them all and herself to a deep slumber, including Aurora. Now Vengeance gets to say he killed them all"
"Cowards" Bellona spat. "They couldn't even handle a small rebellion"
Castor just nodded as if lost in thought.
"You know...I wasn't going to tell you but...I think you should know"
"What?" She imagined the worst yet again.
"It's about Jacks..." He managed.
"What?! Is he alright?" she jumped in her seat. Her heart was now pumping blood that wasn't her own and yet it was overworking. Her love for him, now intertwining with her heightened emotions made her care too overwhelming.
"He has gone to madness. It seems like a curse. He has fallen madly in love with a peasant girl. And yet he is hunting her down. He is always carrying bows and an arrow. As if he is an archer or something"
A/N: for any non OUABH series readers that might be confused search "the balad of the archer and the fox"
He was concerned for his friend as well but nothing could compare to her expression at that moment.
She shook her head in disbelief.
"No, no" she cried out. "I and Jacks love each other. Whatever curse this is I can break it. I am still a witch, I just need mother's spell books"
"Maybe you still are" he shugged, scared for what she might do next.
"I am!" She let out a sob, making the non-lit candles in the room flicker.
"You can't go anywhere right now, the sun is up!" He reminded her.
"Just leave me alone!" It was then that all that has happened finally hit her, the curse on Jacks was the cherry on top that made her explode. She locked herself in one of upstairs bedrooms, horrified, she realized it was Lala's. Which made her weep even harder.