The Queen of the Deep Dark Woods

Every year something has taken away seven children from the villages that linger on the outer skirts of the dark forest. No one speaks of what it is or why it comes. They never speak the names of the children after they are gone.

No one but Kyanna.

Each night she mutters the names of those taken from her village under her breath. She refuses to forget them, her heart and chest burning with rage at the numerous lost children that haunt the village she was born into. They are her mantra, a part of her soul. Everyone else forgets but Kyanna won't.

And she doesn't.

She grows older, years pass her by until she is too old to be a tribute, safe from the unknown that the old women whisper about underneath their breath. The Queen of the Deep Dark Woods they call her, a beast is what Kyanna hisses back where they can't hear.

When her infant nephew is taken as a tribute on her twenty-first birthday, Kyanna has enough. She packs her bag and steals a sword from the old stone chapel, she heads into the Dark Forest that loomed over her, her entire life.

Kyanna doesn't know what she will expect in the Dark Forest but she knows she won't leave until the beast of a Queen is dead and the names she carries deep within her are finally at peace.

~~~~~

Entry into #AfterPartyContest by @TeaNHeartache