Games of a Different Kind-{sequel to Toys of a Dangerous Mind}

Chapter 7

You know the drill: 15 comments, and I can update. Sorry for the late upload here, just had my exams- and I was studying all of last week. Kay, hope you enjoy the chapter, and remember even if there are 15 comments, it's great to hear from all my readers, not just a few!

Washing the floor with an expression the pleaded for a smile and a heart that wished to stop beating. Tears that never fell because I was too stunned to let them. And a mind that was working over-time, as the fear and horror and wild terror consumed me.

This was it.

The wedding I had dreaded for so long, had become a reality that was about to wreak its fury upon me in too short a time. A dress I had seen and loathed would clothe me and show me off to the world as the property of Raxis, and his lawful, wedded wife. The ceremony and the sacred words would be said, every syllabyle a blight on its beautiful ancestry. And a possessive pair of lips would enclose mine with the last toll of the bell.

Raxis was in good humor now, cheerily ordering the servants on to work harder, work faster! Flames dancing in his dark eyes with the knowledge that soon I would be entrapped to him.

Water touched my knee as the sponge I was using overflowed and let the puddle travel towards my skin. I shivered from the cold, rubbing my knee dry and moving away from the puddle. The floor was littered with small dark spots of blood, a reminder of Naomi's feast of the morn of her Transformation. Though I had assumed servants would clean the unsightly mess up, Raxis had delegated the job to me with a teasing smile, letting the nightmares in my dreams stay for a little longer.

I was the only one working in the Dining Room thankfully. No more pitying gazes or tear-filled eyes from my mother and father. Scornful glances and looks of disgust and loathing from Naomi. And the same stony expression that Liam seemed to throw my way whenever we managed to meet occasionally in the hallway.

The others had been kept busy, working for the wedding. What Raxis had said about the need for hard work was utter bull. I knew and he knew that servants could easily handle the load with the lot of them coming to the grand total of around one hundred and fifty. Maybe even more. No, he wanted to rub everyone's face into the ground, just to have them be constantly remembering the fact that I was to become his wife. It was a power play; Raxis did so like playing those games.

I scrubbed harder at the floor, frustrated by my cowardice. Angry because I wasn't the person I had imagined I wanted to be. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a fairy princess. Lofty and slightly impossible dreams, but I wished for all my heart to become one. Then that dream changed when I was seven. On the TV, a programme had come on, a ballet performance: The Nutcracker. As I saw Clara do all those delicate steps and look breath-takingly graceful, I wanted to be a ballerina.

A year of ballet lessons later and the knowledge that I was a little too energetic and clumsy for a life of ballet, I switched to wanting to become a dinosaur. That phase only lasted for a week though, when I found out 1) dinosaurs were extinct and 2) I couldn't become one because it was impossible. I always hated the word 'impossible'. I built my dreams on clouds of fairytales and was truly dedicated to them. When I was ten, I wanted to be an artist. Eleven was the year of scientists (I just wanted to wear the important-looking lab coat) and thirteen was the year that I wanted to be an actress.

Since, I was terrified to performing in front of people, that one didn't even last for half year. My last dream was the one where I wished to be an author. Something grouded, something tangible, something that my parents didn't declare 'impossible'. I loved writing: the feel of my pen in my hand as I wrote pages and pages of curled, slightly messy writing. The way that I could re-read my thoughts in an instance. I was diligent in keeping a diary, and every day I included snippets of funny conversations, my thoughts, any cool events and other stuff.