Seven Sinful Crowns

Evaline

Helina was so selfish, Evaline thought as she walked down the echoing hall, each thought punctuated by the sound of her heeled shoe hitting the polished floor. She had walked these halls so many times as a child, the winding walkways with its halls spreading like a web in every direction were second nature to her. Though her eyes were open, she was not seeing, as noted by the servants whom darted out of her path every few turns.

Honestly, the king had always given her sister everything! A tutor. A library. An army. Of course, Evaline had been given all of those things too when she asked...or demanded...but not the ones she had wanted. Yes, she got a tutor...an old woman named Freya who smelled of burnt cinnamon and smacked her lips when she spoke. Evaline had gotten rid of her after just two weeks. She did not much enjoy learning Suheyle, the very first language of Zuhaleen, anyways. It was coarse and jagged, and her tongue just did not move behind her teeth the way Freya's did. Besides, very few people still spoke its words anyways, and she was to be a queen. Surly she would have a translator at her disposal, she had thought, and she had. In fact, she had many of them serving in her court, speaking her words in the harsh, broken language of the past.

And she had gotten a library...but it was smaller than Helinas and on the other side of the castle. The walk was so long, especially in the winter when the frigid air swooped in through the grand stone archways of the castle walls. Growing up she had never understood why her father insisted on the castle being so open, not a glass panel in sight, but enormous gaping holes through the stones that he would stand before, gazing out into the world. From this high up the mountain, you couldn't see much – just the shadowed figures of the seven fortresses, and never all from the spot, and only if the sky was particularly bright and clear. Now that she had a castle of her own, though, and six sisters held at bay by the eyes of their dwelling father, she understood that the whole idea is to see nothing. No blanket of men and women cloaking the mountain side, crawling up like a swarm of spiders. No ships cutting across the raging waves of the purple sea, or the blue, or the small sliver of pink that lies between. To see nothing is good.

And she had an army within her fortress, yes, but she had had to wait until she claimed her kingdom at seventeen. Helina had taken hold of hers three years prior – the merciless maiden, they called her, and they weren't wrong. Evaline had sent a small unit of her own to their borders once. She had only wanted to test her sister, to see how easy it might be to take what she had, but her sister had slaughtered them all. Personally. Turns out it was not easy at all, and their father was not thrilled to hear of their "games."

"You are no longer children. You are Queens, and I, along with the entire realm, expect you to behave as such! These lives have been wasted...for nothing!"

It was the 'for nothing" part that mattered most. Their father had not been known for his mercy, either. Nor was he known for the immense value he placed on the lives of those around him, aside from his own and his seven daughters. Still, she hadn't tried again. Yet.

Her father, the king, was old. Soon they would walk him to the Bloodfall and he would pass, his blood flowing from his body into the waters below him, not dying, but giving his life freely to the world around him, and thus, gaining eternal life and honor. And when that happened, there would be no one left to smother the fires that burned within the seven sisters, all powerful, all plotting, and all hungry for his throne. For though each of the sisters have their own kingdom, their own castle, their own crown...it is no secret that the king held the realm, and largest castle upon the tallest mountain where he could look out to each of his seven soldiers, as the most powerful man in the world. And it is also no secret that Evaline, and each of her sisters, his soldiers, were poised and ready to take that power as their own...no matter the cost.