Pride & Humility

VI

Picture done by myself. 

Beta: Taintedletter

(óヮò)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Elizabeth stood in the center of her now completely empty room, quivering. Bruises marred her flesh from the servants punishing her, and never in her entire life did she feel as terrified. The beatings she could handle, the isolation she could handle, but now her grandfather stood before her with an even harsher punishment.

Her bruises were formed from slaps, grabs, and tumbles. No one had drawn blood before—not intentionally at least—and each attack had been done at the end of an intense physical training session.

Elizabeth had always been too exhausted to do little more than accept what was coming.

Last night had been no different. After failing another training session she had been unceremoniously battered about before being tossed in her room. Her muscles ached with a familiar pain, and she groped around blindly in darkness for the entire night until she realized they had even taken away her bed.

All she had on her were her torn clothes, and her daggers.

She had believed that would be the end of it, but when dawn came she was proven wrong.

Grandfather Crow threw open the door, pale-faced with anger, and in his hands he gripped a whip covered in spikes.

Elizabeth's heart stopped.

She trembled as cold terror slammed into her like a waterfall. Fear, unlike any she had ever known, overtook all of her senses. Her heart hammered painfully in her chest and she tried to form any kind of coherent thought.

She was running on no food or water for at least a day by that point, and she was physically—and mentally—exhausted. What little energy she had was used to fuel her fear and turned her legs into stone.

Her punishments before hand had only been that in her mind. Punishments.

But now something else triggered upon seeing that hideous weapon.

She might actually die.

He might actually kill her.

One hit on her arteries would cause her to bleed out in seconds and die. One wrong move on her part, and her body would be unceremoniously dumped in the backyard for stray animals to eat.

The sheer horror she felt was indescribable.

"Unbelievable. You failed another session, again," hissed Grandfather Crow. "Do you not understand? You are ruining my legacy. I should have known. I should have seen it coming. You and your whorish mother have dragged our name into the mud for the last time. I will make you understand. I will make you great."

He stormed into her bedroom, but before Elizabeth could do anything further, they were interrupted.

"Just when I think humans can't become any more moronic, I'm proven wrong yet again," came a velvety soft voice.

Elizabeth's breath hitched as Selim stepped into room, hands in his pockets as he slowly, predatorily, walked around the retired general to stand beside Elizabeth.

'Oh no—Grandfather will—'

Elizabeth didn't think further than that, immediately moving (stumbling) to stand between Grandfather Crow and Selim.

Her exhausted, terrified mind didn't have the energy to dwell on why Selim was there, or what was going on. All she knew was that her Grandfather might seriously kill her, and she wasn't about to let him lay a damn finger on the only person who cared about her.