Seven Sinful Crowns

Helina

She didn't miss this castle.

Growing up here with her sisters and all their staff, cooks, maids, nannies, tutors, it had seemed like an overcrowded prison. There wasn't a room in its vast entirety where she could find solitude for longer than a few stolen moments. For the first sixteen years of her life, she had spent her days learning the arts; magic and battle, and unlike most of her siblings, arithmetic, science and the lost languages, after a long debate with the king over whether it was appropriate or not for a princess to spend her time on such topics. He had refused, she had turned her back to him, her tiny feet leaving quickened echoes in her wake.

It took three days of silence, her sitting at one end of the dinner table and him the other, but her will was unwavering...even more so than his own, and on the third night when he came to find her in the library, her small, furious face fixed intently on the tapestry hung along the wall, he caved. Two days later, she met with Killian. He was taller than her, but not by much, and his face still held the roundness of a child's. When he entered the room she did not stand. Instead she stared at him from across the large wooden table, made to seem even larger by her small figure. She watched as he froze, his eyes full of fear, his shoulders straightening, and then she spoke with a voice much too demanding to belong to such a slight, cherry-haired thing.

"You will tell me the history of this tapestry. And then you will teach me how to read these scrolls, and how to make words of my own. I wish to possess them as the men do, and like the kings, take them as my own."

And so they brought their chairs from the table to sit alongside the woven witness to the history of Zuhaleen, the western world, and he spoke in a voice quiet at first, but which grew stronger as her own fell soft in wonder at all that could be said - with and without words.

"Helina, I had wondered when you'd be making an appearance."

Helina stood in the doorway of her childhood study, the only sanctuary this entire castle held for her, seething. Her sister had a particular talent at fanning the flames within her, though she supposed it may not be too difficult a task. She was not blind to the fact that her temper was a force to be reckoned with, nor was anyone else in this kingdom or the next...or the next...or then next.

In truth, she was feared by most a many, and didn't mind it at all. She had heard the whispers on the streets, throughout the villages. She was the red queen. The wraith. The merciless maiden. "Poor woman," they had said. "To be forever alone. What will become of her without a King?" Her cheeks always grew hot at the end, and she would grit her teeth and ride ahead at the thought. She was Wilhelina, Queen of Pyruh, the greatest soldier in all the kingdoms and held the largest, most ferocious army in all the world. She did not need a king, and she would not take one, either, though her father wished it so.

"Get out, Evaline."

"Honestly, Helina, you still have such a problem sharing? It's the only quiet space in the castle.

"Yes, I do. And you still have a problem not getting what you want. Out." The last word ripped through closed teeth as she stepped through the threshold flinging the door wide.

"Testy, testy, sister. No need to put up such a fuss, you've simply to ask."

Helina looked on, Evaline sliding from her chair behind the wooden desk and sauntering ahead. She didn't say another word as she passed, but Helina knew that behind her smirk, she was burning with envy. She had always wanted her library and no other room the king offered had sufficed. She screamed and stomped and slammed about for months, putting the king in very tight spot between his daughters. In the end, Helina kept her library to herself, the king knew better than to enrage her with her gifts being still unstable, and Evaline stormed off, slamming about for another few months before the tantrums ceased.