Look What You Made Me Do

Part I

I don't like your little games

Don't like your tilted stage

The role you made me play

Of the fool

No, I don't like you

I stand in the throne room, for the first time in over a year. Oh how things have changed.

They've tilted the stage. He sits on the higher end, surrounded by the traitorous nobles who'd stood by him in his bid for the crown. The nobles who'd been more reluctant sit at the lower end.

Around the stage are gruesome decorations: pikes adorned by the heads of the nobles who had refused to accept his explanations and instead demanded investigations. They'd suffered for their loyalty to the true royal family-my family.

If he knew that I was still alive, that I was still here, he'd have my head also. He'd put it right next to his throne, a mark of his power.

He loved power. Certainly more than he loved me, if he'd ever loved me at all.

I remember the first time I'd seen him, at the ball my parents had thrown in honor of my eighteenth birthday. He'd been the most handsome man in the room that night. I danced with him once, twice and then a third time. My mother had pulled me aside, told me not to pay too much attention to him. He was just a minor lord, she'd said, one with few lands and little jurisdiction. He's not worthy of your time, she'd said.

I pouted and turned my attention to the other nobles, but his sweet words and graceful movements lingered in my memory all night. It might have been the ended that night, but then he started sending me flowers and letters proclaiming his infatuation. He was so good at the games he played, painting himself as my perfect Prince Charming. Caught up in the ecstasy of living my very own fairy tale, I couldn't see anyone but him.

My parents were hesitant at first when I told them he was the one I wanted to marry. But I was their spoiled princess and I insisted until they gave in. I suppose they thought it didn't really matter. Even as my husband, he didn't have any power--that belonged to my parents and after that to my brother, the heir to the throne.

It didn't deter him though. He had a plan and he carried it out so perfectly that we could have been actors in a play he'd written. My role was that of the love-stricken fool.