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54: Unpleasant Truth
My mother never believed that I was fit to rule.
I can't blame her.
Sometimes when you play both sides of the fence, each side hates you. Dorothea's Queens squabbled and picked amongst themselves for power, each one with an eye for how to best stab the other in the back. And the psychic taint I had woven so carefully in a tangled web, my hands shaking, pouring all of my desperate power into, repulsed the very people I was fighting to save -- because it was a taint familiar to them, from the monsters I'd modelled it off of.
Some people knew. The landens or Blood I managed to smuggle out, using old trails and nets of power. My webs were often primitive at best; I could hardly ask the Black Widows that the Priestess's kind favoured for help on the ventures I needed to accomplish. But they sufficed. Sometimes I think they failed; I would feel them snap, and huddle in my dark room, feeling a sick headache ricochet between my temples -- morbidly fixating on the helpless people who had been protected by that web, seeing the nightmares I witness in the courts enacted on them again and again.
I can tell you right now, my sleep was shit until I coerced the court healer into giving me draughts.
I would have died. Never mind that Witch's power hadn't killed me, I would have died -- and so horrifically. I saw it in their eyes when we unexpectedly confronted each other, the Warlord and I. They would have taken every ounce of their pain out through me, and I -- Mother Night, I was so sick with terror. I have never been and never will be so afraid in my life, seeing my death yawn blackly in his glazed eyes, his teeth bared in a feral, murderous smile.
But there was a witch, one I'd saved, who saved me in turn. She explained things, she told them about the route, she pointed out that I hadn't died. And my life was spared; they didn't kill me, and they could have, and they wanted to.
But I don't think they'll ever trust me.
I don't blame them. All the years I spend buried in those courts, witnessing horrors I can barely --
I don't think I could stand to be trusted. I can barely stand to be touched, though I escaped the courts relatively unscathed; I remember their laughter sleeping and waking. I'm lucky I can mix my own draughts now.
I was there, you see, for every moment of their tortures and their sick games. And I still wake up sick to my stomach with shame, the same shame that burned through me every time I played out the lie and pretended to be like them in the face of a victim I couldn't save. Because I should have tried. I should have done more.
I think only a monster could have done what I done, and sacrificed one after another just because I wouldn't survive the fight. A coward, and a monster.
Oh mother, I'm so scared that you were right.
Fandom: Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy
Muse: Katirina Belmonte
Word Count: 525
Disclaimer: I made Kat; the world and its wonders belong to Anne Bishop.
I can't blame her.
Sometimes when you play both sides of the fence, each side hates you. Dorothea's Queens squabbled and picked amongst themselves for power, each one with an eye for how to best stab the other in the back. And the psychic taint I had woven so carefully in a tangled web, my hands shaking, pouring all of my desperate power into, repulsed the very people I was fighting to save -- because it was a taint familiar to them, from the monsters I'd modelled it off of.
Some people knew. The landens or Blood I managed to smuggle out, using old trails and nets of power. My webs were often primitive at best; I could hardly ask the Black Widows that the Priestess's kind favoured for help on the ventures I needed to accomplish. But they sufficed. Sometimes I think they failed; I would feel them snap, and huddle in my dark room, feeling a sick headache ricochet between my temples -- morbidly fixating on the helpless people who had been protected by that web, seeing the nightmares I witness in the courts enacted on them again and again.
I can tell you right now, my sleep was shit until I coerced the court healer into giving me draughts.
I would have died. Never mind that Witch's power hadn't killed me, I would have died -- and so horrifically. I saw it in their eyes when we unexpectedly confronted each other, the Warlord and I. They would have taken every ounce of their pain out through me, and I -- Mother Night, I was so sick with terror. I have never been and never will be so afraid in my life, seeing my death yawn blackly in his glazed eyes, his teeth bared in a feral, murderous smile.
But there was a witch, one I'd saved, who saved me in turn. She explained things, she told them about the route, she pointed out that I hadn't died. And my life was spared; they didn't kill me, and they could have, and they wanted to.
But I don't think they'll ever trust me.
I don't blame them. All the years I spend buried in those courts, witnessing horrors I can barely --
I don't think I could stand to be trusted. I can barely stand to be touched, though I escaped the courts relatively unscathed; I remember their laughter sleeping and waking. I'm lucky I can mix my own draughts now.
I was there, you see, for every moment of their tortures and their sick games. And I still wake up sick to my stomach with shame, the same shame that burned through me every time I played out the lie and pretended to be like them in the face of a victim I couldn't save. Because I should have tried. I should have done more.
I think only a monster could have done what I done, and sacrificed one after another just because I wouldn't survive the fight. A coward, and a monster.
Oh mother, I'm so scared that you were right.
Fandom: Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy
Muse: Katirina Belmonte
Word Count: 525
Disclaimer: I made Kat; the world and its wonders belong to Anne Bishop.
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And it's so terribly selfish, and I hate that I think it because there are those that suffered so much more, but...sometimes I just want a little peace.
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