Queen Lydia

Chapter Five: The New Queen

When I finally came to, I was lying on my side, my head pillowed on my hands. The ground underneath me was hard and cold and very uncomfortable.

I yawned, stretching out my arms, but found that my hands were cuffed together.

"Well that's just great..." I muttered to myself. I looked around, the ground was concrete. I was lying in the middle of a ten by ten cell with two solid walls behind me, and two barred ones in front of me, with several guards stationed throughout the rest of the space. There were only nine other cells on either side of a narrow walkway. I was in the dungeon.

The bars closest to my left had a door with a solid square about waist high. I assumed this was the lock. I was going to have to pick it. Along with the handcuffs.

Thank the Lord that I remembered to put the bobby pins in my hair this morning. Years ago, I decided I was going to wear bobby pins in my hair in case I was ever locked in or out of somewhere. It was finally going to come in handy.

Several minutes later, I gave up trying to unlock the handcuffs, and I decided they could wait until I was out of the cell.

As I stood up, my foot got caught in my skirt, and I tripped, launching myself into the bars, making enough noise that the guards, who had been dispersed throughout the dungeon, came running my way. "Someone alert the Queen!"

This stunned me, along with the fact that I slammed my head into the bars. I was the Queen. Who were they talking about if I was right here?

I looked up as four short guys, who couldn't have been more than four and a half feet tall, were fumbling with keys to unlock my cell. I was still stunned from ramming head first into a bar, that I just did as they asked.

Two of them walked ahead of me through the walkway, and two more walked holding my bent arms even though they were still cuffed together.

We walked all the way to the throne room, and along the way, I noticed some of my decorations that I had hung up in the five years I ruled, had been taken down and looked as though they were on their way to storage or something.

The walk seemed to take forever, but I have always been terrible at estimating time.

We reached our destination, and I found it was the throne room that I almost never used, and had almost forgotten that it existed.On top my throne was the last person I expected.

Katlyn.

My ex best friend had stolen my throne, and was now holding me prisoner. Just my luck.

The throne room was quite large and echoey, with the throne itself atop three stairs of platforms in the center of the the farthest wall. The guards walked me down the carpeted walkway which would have felt like a red carpet except for the fact that I was hand cuffed. We reached the base of the stair stepped platform and one of the guards kicked the back of my knees, forcing me into a kneeling position with my head down in a bow.

"Well, well, well," I heard her say slowly with the clip clop of her heels enunciating each 'well' as she came down the stairs. "Looks like Sleeping Beauty was trying to escape." I could hear the wicked smile in her voice as she spoke; that smile filled me simultaneously with dread and rage.

"You didn't have to do it this way," I said through clenched teeth. "It could have been a triumvirate... If you even know what that means," I said under my breath. I'd learned the word in history class, and it was such an odd word that it'd always stuck with me.

She cupped my chin in her hand, jerking my head up to her gaze, and looked me right in the eyes, "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that last part. Besides," her voice softened a smidge, "There can be only one. And now, that one is me." She dropped my chin roughly, waving to the guards holding me on my knees; they hauled me to my feet, taking me towards the dungeon, I assumed. All the while I heard the new queen faintly chuckle as we left the throne room.