To Kill a King

2: Queens and Beggars

For two years, Her Majesty kept me to play with.

Games. Oh, did she play games. Chain me to a wall, blindfold a soldier. Told him to aim an arrow at the target above my head. Miss, he dies. They never missed... but I wish they died.

Tallied up marks on my back with a dagger, making me count it out. Scream? Tallied ten more. She called it Saving Parchment.

I felt it each time my flesh bled from the blow of their whips, felt it each night as I lay in my tiny stone cell. Fear. Terror. I used to be fearless. I used to be unafraid because I could outrun anything that dared to hurt me, because I struck back with vengeance tenfold.

But Queen Aramercy was untouchable, and I couldn't even spit on her if I tried.

— -

December

She taught me chess.

"Pawn moves a square at a time," she instructed. I had my fingers stuck in metal clamps. For every piece I lost she gave a twist to the screw, nudging the clamps tighter. I bit my tongue as the metal bit my fingers.

In under an hour, I had her queen trapped and her king in checkmate.

Cruel? Yes, she was cruel. Not for the cuts, the bruises and broken bones, but because for two years, she sought to take away the only part of myself I valued more than anything else—my will to survive.

I would not let her.

— -

March

There was a place on the palace terrace, built on stone above a vast evergreen forest. It had no railing, nothing to hold onto before the edge dropped down to a thousand feet of clear, thin air. The Queen told me to stand there, right at the edge where the slope of the ground couldn't yet push you over, but slanted enough that it drove you mad.

"Turn around," she said.

I turned around. The wind whipped at my front, threatening to send me teetering over the edge. My naked toes clutched at the cold rough rock, heels dangling over empty space. I swayed.

"Good day, Rat?" She sat in a litter in front of me, safe away from death and cold.

"Yes," I whispered.

"Good, good."

— -

April

Under her orders, I learned how to read and write. For months, there was no food each day or sleep each night until she saw that I'd copied the texts she gave me to perfection. I was smart, learned fast. But just to spite her, I covered them with blots and scribbles. I paid for them afterwards. Reluctantly, my beautiful defiant illegible letters turned into loopy slanting swirls that were disgustingly identical to hers.

Every afternoon, she told me to stand in front of a mirror and attempted to force into me the art of a curtsy.

"Smile," she said again. "Smile."

I gave a half-hearted grimace, glaring at her through the mirror.

"With teeth."

I bared my teeth savagely.

She blew out a breath in frustration.

— -

High Summer

On better days, I was allowed outside on the palace grounds for an hour or two, always with chains around my wrists and a guard at my back. The Queen's daughter was there sometimes, laughing around the fountains with her nursemaids, never casting a glance at the lone pale figure standing in the shadows, with the scars on her shoulders.