ONE DARK QUEEN ❖ (A Three Dark Crowns Tale)

BEFORE

Queen Arsinoe sits calmly on her throne, emotionless and blank in her expressions and manners. Today she is wrapped up in a new poisoner disguise. She wears a fancy, suffocating black dress with embroided lace patterns decorating the bodice and her old choppy locks are gone, instead her black hair has grown and she has not been allowed to cut it. It has grown long and sleek. Just as she hates. It doesn't suit her at all. But the Arrons say it's all about appearance.

For others have decided for her that she must look beautiful, perfect and strong. Anyone else would've been a better choice to fit that role. But Mira isn't here anymore,neither is Kat. How ironic that she is queen crowned now, the last triplet standing when she was the least queenly of the lot.

Arsinoe feels nothing, nothing at all. For she has nothing. Except a heavy head that wears a callous cage disguised as a pretty crown.

Joseph is dead. Mirabella is dead. Katharine is dead. Jules is dead. Dead. With no one to remember who they truly were other than their part in the war and the vanquishing of the mist but Arsinoe remembers them and she is not allowed to repeat their names. But she does secretly in her head every night. It has been so long since she's seen their faces. She can barely remember them, the faces of those she loved and lost.

Everyone was so eager to forget the cursed cycle as they called it and no one wanted to reminisce about the Queens War, not when the power shifted back again to the queensline. Any who still talk of rebellion have been swiftly silent and the rest who supported Jules have shifted to Arsinoe now, their last option. The people take Jules' death or murder as a sign of the Goddess. They are fearful and the temple took advantage, preaching,
inciting all the bold people in the rebellion or the distrusting fearful islanders to sway back to accepting the triplets line. It was the known. Tradition. Safer than the unknown. Yet far more dangerous.

The only one she had left was Billy but he abandoned her when she was dragged back to Fennbirn and a crown placed upon her head before she could blink or even agree. But once she was crowned no one would let her leave.

After the rebellion and Jules becoming queen she thought she was free from Fennbirn, free from all the pain. But less then three months after Jules was crowned she was dead. There was panic afterwards and due to the mysterious nature of Jules death the islanders were terrified and felt a sinister presence - the Goddess, who struck down powerful, fierce and brave Jules as easily as Arsinoe draws her breath on this fine spring day. It was chaos she heard and the island scrambled, grasping at the only queen like person they had left, the last triplet. The last option as she had been all her life. Ironic that she would be the last triplet standing out of them all.

Arsinoe was told the Legion Queen had died by a Fennbirn delegation who tracked her down in Centra and she didn't have any real choice as they took her back to Fennbirn, the ones who had opposed Jules before were delighted, none more than the Arrons as they took her in and made her their new puppet. Put an alarming amount of cosmetics on her face, grew out her hair and suffocated her with corsets and pretty dresses. They were so happy to have a strong poisoner queen at last. Though no one could argue Kat's fierceness her poisoner gift was never strong.

Within a few months Arsinoe looked in the mirror and saw a plainer version of Katharine looking back at her. A more broken version of Katharine even though that seems impossible. Though at least the makeup couldn't cover her scars, her true face engraved with the mark of a bear's embrace, it reminds her of the girl she was. The one who knew no fear. Ironically she would prefer to be the old version of her, a giftless naturalist rather than a poisoner puppet, growing the poisoner's power even further.

The Arrons and the temple aligned so quickly after Jules' demise, eager for the natural order of the Goddess to come back into play. Even the elementals became their allies as they had always firmly believed in the cycle of triplets. And they all seized power. The islanders had no choice but to comply, for no one was brave enough to oppose them or offer a replacement. Everyone followed the will of the Goddess and the temples preached that it was all a test and that the island needed to repent for losing faith in the queensline.