The Siege of Talons & Torment: An Epic Fantasy

{Cateline}

“What is the root of all evil, Princess?”

Not even a soulless reaper, undeserving of the dullest scythe, stared back at me. There was no explanation for the putrid fate that clawed for my trembling body—nothing to warrant it.

It was cruel and unusual. Cold and merciless. Vicious—yet tempting. Crimson blood stained the soaked wood, creaking beneath my father’s weight. He kneeled, his hand firmly grasped around the butt of an ax. Blood dripped off the blade’s edge, catching my attention. I remained kneeling—silent, submissive, scared.

Petrified. Every bone in my body shook as the crisp winter breeze ghosted a kiss across the tip of my raw nose. “Father…” I rasped, but he did not hear me. My gaze widened, my attention drawn to the gore under his boot. “Father, please—”

“Must I remind you what happens when a king repeats himself, Princess Cateline?” he said, toying with the title like it was a mockery. “Careful not, and you will end up on the executioner’s stage.”

I let my head fall forward, the idle murmurs of his private audience filling absolute silence. The frigid shores crashed against hard sand to the east, and winds whistled through the mountain crests to the west. There was no escaping this—this was my punishment. A trial.

The ax collided on its side as he let go of it, heavy limbs thumping against the creaky stage as my father grunted. I slowly tilted my head up, watching as he dragged two heavy, headless bodies until they were halfway hanging off the ledge. My mouth turned dry, the tremors ceasing along with my heart. My ears rang, and the haunting, phantom tang of blood coated the back of my throat as I fought a gag. I savored the sight of death like it should poison me, my heart squeezing within the confines of my chest and weeping alongside my numb mind.

I exhaled.

“Death,” I wheezed. “No such crueler thing exists, father.”

I inhaled. Silence stole every attempt at letting the air go. My father’s judgment killed every shaken nerve in my body. I finally met his gaze, our resemblance scarce. His burned chestnut glare harshened into slits, and when he leaned over me, I saw the splattered essence of dried blood coloring his blond hairline.

His words were a spitty, gruesome growl. “Love will be your bitter end. Love, Princess, is the reason kingdoms fall. Do you think these guards would have committed high treason without the promise of a better life—a better chance at caring for their families? Land, food, wealth…yes. But their hearts swelled at the idea of what?”

I shook my head, my lip trembling as I stammered for the words to fight him. To beg him to show me mercy and to send those corpses off to be buried, but as he stepped off the stage and grabbed my chin, I knew this was not a fortune I’d be granted. His fingers were wet with the blood of fallen lives, for which I sobbed.

The air cracked out of my chest like a whip.

“Are you going to let the allure of love blind your pursuit of a throne?” he asked me, his breath reeking of alcohol and hatred. I tried to squirm out of his grasp, but he held strong. So strong that I feared my face would bruise. “Because if you do, it may be time for Axulran’s only princess to taste the true extent of the death she fears.”

“Father—” I wept. I tried to turn and catch sight of my brothers, my mother, anybody—

But they’d gone. The crowd had dwindled as if instructed to abandon the executioner’s territory. The nearby houses were locked up, nary a candlelight glistening against the twilight haze. The night was always calm, but this was eerie.

When I was younger, I had difficulties imagining the aftermath of the rebellions my father squashed beneath his boot. I struggled to understand the extent to which these people were tortured, maimed, and abused, but tonight, I witnessed how ordinary a thing like violence was to the people of Axulran.

To the people of my kingdom.

One familiar gaze was strung over me, with despair brewing beneath raw anger. Strands of white hair peeked past the hood covering Alleyn’s face, and his beard was stained red, too.

The kindest man I’d known, save for my brothers. He shook his head once as if instructing me to obey.

My focus fell to his hands, watching blood drip off the tip of his finger. I caught the glistening glimmer of shackles holding his hands together. Choking on a gasp, I returned my shaky focus to my father. He went by many names—

Self-proclaimed Destroyer of Magic, single-handedly freeing the six kingdoms of such evils.

A father who taught me hate before love, that love was crueler than death.

The King of Axulran, a birthright he had no plans to give up.

“I shan’t ask you again,” he said, shoving me so I was on my side. I hadn’t the time to react before the sharp edge of the executioner’s ax grazed my neck. “Are you blinded by evil just like him?”

Him? I wanted to shake my head, but a fearful voice reminded me of the ease with which life was taken. I couldn’t look up at my father, not without falling apart. Instead, I croaked, “No!” My voice racketed against the nearby buildings like a bad omen. “No, I will not let evil blind me.”

A gruesome chuckle resonated in his belly, and perhaps when I was a child—young, impressionable, and moldable to the woman he wished I was today—I would have found solace in his laughter.

Tonight, it was as sickening as the sound of the metal ax scraping against the cobblestone beneath my head before clattering alongside me. I jumped out of my skin, halfway expecting to open my eyes and see my body detached from my head, but I was in one piece.

I let out one gasp. Two. Three—

I was sobbing before I could crawl back onto my knees and even fathom the idea of running.

“Do you hear that, Alleyn?” My father’s voice boomed as if they were worlds away. “Perhaps she’s cut from the same cloth as me after all. It’d be a shame to see her succumb to such mortal desires as you, elven scum.”

I curled my fingers against the rough cobblestone, turning to look at Alleyn over my shoulder. Elves no longer existed. This was—this wasn’t right.

He was my rock and the only reason I knew what light existed beyond the confines of this terrible place. Without him, my mentor, I’d be lost.

“What are you talking about?” I rasped, shaking my head wildly. “Father, what is this?” My head snapped up to look at him, but his glare was set on Alleyn as if he were ready to kill. I’d seen that look time and time again. Every person close enough to witness his anger had. He unsheathed his sword, the untouched steel glistening against the twilight. It sang a song of my greatest fears—it sang of my heartbreak.

“Father, what are you doing?” I asked, but he was already storming toward Alleyn. The two guards kicked him in the back of the knees, removed his robe, and held his head back so the notch of his neck was jagged. I stumbled onto my feet and raced after him, but the skirt of my dress caught my footing.

My chin smashed into the cobblestone, teeth chattering against each other as I screamed. Blood coated my mouth, but I clawed forward, my nails breaking against the rough stone. I lifted my head again to scream at him to stop, but Alleyn’s blood was already permeating in the air. The edge of my father’s blade sliced clean through the tendon of his neck, and when the king moved aside, Alleyn was already staring at me with his shackled hands covering his neck.

He was whispering words at me. I wept like never before, scrambling onto all fours so I could catch him as the guards let him fall. To my surprise, my father let me. Alleyn was not family in blood, but he was everything—the closest thing to a father I’d gotten.

“This is the consequence of love, Cateline,” King Airen grumbled, his voice in a darker, crueler place. “Secrets. Affairs. Lies. Is that the type of reign you want?”

I started mumbling incoherent things as I watched Alleyn’s eyes glaze over. Reaching for his hair, I tried to find my voice. I wanted to scream at King Airen for what he’d done.

I wanted to tell my father I hated him.

Alleyn reached up to hold the side of my neck, and when his eyes closed, I witnessed his last breath. It whistled up at me, beckoning my rage. My heartache. The breeze followed his breath, swirling around me as if winter had sought my embrace. His hand fell, but the side of my neck was still red hot. Slowly, the vision of Alleyn faded—shifting into something wholly unfamiliar yet ordinary all in one go. He aged backward ten years within the blink of an eye, and his ears sharpened into points that poked past strands of his hair.

Elven scum…

I stood, my chin aching, my skin burning, and my heart thundering loudly in my chest. I finally faced my father, watching as he spat on Alleyn’s motionless body. “Love, Cateline, is the reason every one of these people died today.”

“Evil,” I muttered, my voice coming out in a croak. “Love is not evil. You are.”

Airen looked at me wide-eyed and bellowed out a laugh. “I ought to have your tongue for insinuating such a thing,” he hissed and waved the bloodied blade around like a threat. “Awfully good to a prince you’ll be. An obedient, silent wife.”

The tips of my fingers twitched. “Wherever you go, death follows. You are what is wrong with this kingdom, Father. You are the plague that curses these lands.”

He cocked his head, lifted the blade, and rested it against my shoulder so the edge kissed the crook of my neck. I was no use to him in the long run. I was not the heir—but I was a way to wealth. He just needed to find the right suitor willing to pay. I’d come to accept that in my later years, and now, at eighteen, it was a fate I wished to challenge.

“Say it again, Princess.” Airen leaned forward, his blade shifting ever so slightly and slicing my thin skin. I wanted to hiss, flinch, and make any move that acknowledged the hurt, but I refused. “I am the what?”

I was numb. So numb that every part of my body shook from the inside out.

So I closed my eyes.

“You are the evil,” I whispered, feeling his blade slice deeper. I wept with my next words, “that curses these lands—”

What came next was not eternal slumber in a realm far away from war, from violence, from him. It was the implosion of wrath embodied in my cold heart, the warm hand that guided the nerves from my body and onto him.

Something in me changed as twilight shifted to night.

When I opened my eyes, I was not dead. The air hit me in the lungs once more, and I was free of the aching pain that tormented my bones.

I woke on a new day with fresh linens and eerie silence greeting me. The sun bled through sheer curtains, warming the empty spaces beside me. I sat up, the sounds of wind whipping through my ears as if I were journeying through a tunnel. My vision blurred in and out of focus, but when I captured the gaze of a nearby maid, she dropped the silver platter of supplies she’d been holding.

“Come quick,” she screamed as she scurried out of the room. “The princess has woken from her slumber!”

I turned to the dresser beside the bed, staring at the reflection in awe.

That who gazed back at me was older…paler and weaker, sure, but an older version of what I’d remembered no less. I tried to climb off the mattress and stand, but the floor swept out from under me. I collapsed onto the edge of the bed once more and sucked in a shallow breath, turning my head side to side to ensure I wasn’t losing my mind.

I reached for the side of my neck my father had tried to cut—and when my fingers grazed boiling skin, I hissed and flicked away. In one careful movement, I pulled my hair aside to look at the curse that plagued me.

It was no ordinary rash or fever, no. That which stared back at me was a golden, glistening symbol etched into my skin.

The very thing I’d been told no longer existed…

I, the Princess of Axulran, had magic in my blood.

I, a weak, fallible girl, had beaten death and woke up with a new way to fight.

I, Cateline Bennett, was cursed.