Daughters of the King |✓|

Chapter Three

The relief of my mother's absence was short-lived. It was only another two days before the war finally caught up to us, and the violence lasted for a week. Gun shots rang out at every hour, so loud I could feel them in my chest and in my skull. You could never tell how close they were—if you were on the edge of death or safety. The screaming, too, seemed to go on endlessly, even during the nights, and I half-expected to go deaf.

Even if it meant we were cowards, we shut all the doors and the windows, and we waited for it to be over.

...

Over the course of several weeks, the enemy army would come to reside permanently in our little town. Soldiers took over houses, some that were empty and some that weren't. Where there was space, they filled it. It was on TV they announced the war had been lost, but besides that, life was pretty much the same. Sky still found ways to remain drunk, Kid still talked incessantly and pointlessly, and I was still filled with desperation for escape, not any different from before.

The only difference was that there were soldiers. Lots and lots of soldiers.

On the front doors of every house, they posted up announcements. On lamp post's too, and street corners, they put out advertisements for the new laws. Even after a good hard rain, when the posters would get soaked and ruined, they would be replaced the next day with fresh ones.

We were ordered not to worship our fallen king, but to worship their gods instead. We had to pledge our loyalty to them, which was strange for us in the King's Country. Religion was something which hadn't existed here in a long time, but our new leaders believed they could save us from the wrath of the gods. They claimed the world's sins were to blame for the infertility and they aspired to cleanse us of our impurities.

They were full of hope, the poor things.

But hope is too dangerous, too reckless, too useless of a thing. The kind of thing that makes you vulnerable and stupid. The kind of thing I could never afford.

As far as I was concerned, these soldiers were as crazy as everyone else; grasping at anything and everything to help make the end of the world seem a little less bleak—a little less harsh.

The only good thing was that they feared me. Most of them were men from the Wastelands, and their laws stated that no man could touch, speak to, or even look at a woman for fear of angering the gods further. It didn't even matter that I was barren, that I wasn't a Daughter of the King.

Although, it mattered that I was albino. Sometimes the soldiers looked, like they couldn't help themselves, but with the expression of a person who expects to be struck by a bolt of lightning. It was almost thrilling, watching them cower away as though I were the maker of their doom—as though I were the lightning bolt itself coming to strike them down.

Not that their fear benefited me much. With the new laws in place, we weren't allowed to do anything without asking permission first. Soldiers were stationed everywhere, always watching through a thinly veiled illusion of protection. It's like they expected a riot at any moment. And, honestly, I expected it, too. I might even have been wishing for it.

But until then, we were prisoners in our own homes, myself most of all.

I remained locked away in my room, staring a hole into the wall and biting my nails bloody. I kept daydreaming of what would've happened if I'd gotten on that train first, instead of her. I spent entire afternoons fantasizing about this. Imagining that my mother had been the one left behind and forced to live the life I was living now. I could picture clearly how she'd be losing her mind, pacing the floors and chewing her nails bloody, a tiger trapped in a cage.

So I made sure to be the opposite of her in every way.

I slept as little aspossible. I filled the pockets of my jacket. I kept quiet. I thought of nothingelse except the day when I would be free of this place. But as long as the armywas here, enforcing their new laws with an iron fist and an armory of machineguns, I was stuck.