Look What You Made Me Do

Part III

I don't like your kingdom keys

They once belonged to me

You asked me for a place to sleep

Locked me out

Then threw a feast

I was taken to the dungeons for I don't know how many days. Time had no meaning in that stifling darkness and with nothing but my thoughts to accompany,I felt as if a madness was beginning to take a hold of me.

It was during my incarceration when the Chief-of-Army came to see me.

For him, this was truly a victory. Just days prior to their deaths, my parents had discovered that the Chief-of-Army had been torturing prisoners by burning them. It was an act completely against their code of conduct and they were in the process of replacing him when they were murdered.

He knelt in front of me as I laid listlessly on the floor. I didn't bother with proclaiming my innocence. Almost everyone I loved was dead and the rest thought I was the murderer.

"You should've said yes, you know," he said conversationally. What was he on about? "When I proposed, you should have said yes. Then none of this would have happened."

Slowly, I sat up, facing him. "What do you mean?"

He reached out a hand. I flinched away, but undeterred, he dragged a knuckle down my cheek.

"You're rather stupid, aren't you? Do you honestly not realize who killed your parents?"

"Who?"

"Why, your husband of course."

He went on then to lay out their plan in meticulous detail.

As soon as we were married, my husband had a close friend of his, another low-class noble, approach both the Chief-of-Army and the Grand Judge as well as eleven other nobles that were outspoken against my parents rules. They met in a royal safehouse just outside the city, where my husband told them that he had a plan to usurp my family's power and take the throne for himself. Knowing that each of them had their own grievances against the crown, my husband asked for and received their support.

With great pride, the Chief-of-Army told me that the final plan had been designed by himself, my husband and the Grand Judge. The rest of the nobles were involved in varying degrees. The Castle Herald had acted as a spy, exchanging information for a few coins, though he was kept unaware of exactly what was happening.

He left, but his voice still rang in my ears with the names of the traitors that had killed my parents and brother. They would kill me next and I deserved it. I was the weak link that had allowed this to happen. In the dark of the dungeons, I could only see my parents' faces and my brother's questioning me, blaming me.

I sank deeper into the endless abyss of sorrow.

Then the day came when I was dragged outside. I stood in front of crowds of people--people who once adored me, loved me, wanted me. Now they booed and jeered, calling for my death. They quieted down once my husband started speaking, "My people! Standing before you is the traitor who has ruined the peace and serenity with which you lived under the rule of the Good King. She thought that with the deaths of her family, she would become your ruler--but no crime goes unpunished. As befitting her treachery, she will be drowned in the Black River, and may she burn in Hell forever after for her evil."

He paused, letting the crowd cheer. The bastard. He'd taken over my kingdom, my people--what was he before I brought him to these heights?

"And just as we mourned for three days for the deaths of our Good King and Queen and then again for three days for the death of the New King, we shall now feast for three days in honor of the death of their killer."

Amidst their cheering, I was taken to the river.

He stood by, eyes twinkling in vicious delight as the executioner started tying rocks to my legs. "Goodbye, love," he mouthed.

From the moment that I had learned the truth about him, I'd felt several things. Numbness, disbelief, grief, regret, and anger at both him and myself. But now, a new feeling arose within me, overpowering everything that I had felt before, running like burning ice through my veins. Hatred. And with that hatred, determination.

His crimes would not go unpunished.