join me.
DRABBLE PROMPT | ACCEPTING–– J O I N M E / a drabble about my character giving your character an offer
In the end, there had been nothing but blood stained bone and wreckage. She’d seen to it, had felt as the winds themselves ceased to exist within the snow ridden mountains. For, no one was to breath, no one was to feel so much as their beating heart if she herself did not permit it so. Swathed in furs, crimson coats the ends, familiar scent of rust finding itself invading her senses. She’s grown accustomed to it, the stench of death that manages to follow in her wake. If it was not the fresh carcasses of the children in which she’d failed to save from their now ashen remnants, it was the foul reminder that their charred flesh had touched that of her own. She, a pristine being, once as lowly as them. Once as hopeful as them. How they’d seen her, a girl with such poise, hair wild within the winds and their eyes shone, bright with the promise of a better tomorrow as she’d watched their homes burn, as she’d heard their screams echo.
Scorned, her own blood, hidden ichor laying within, now courses through veins. Bubbling, seething, aching with a hunger in which she cannot seem to sedate. Her own madness hidden beneath the guise of a war driven queen. The promise of a woman who’d burn cities to the ground if only to make way for a better home to lay rest there tomorrow. It’s with Aleksander’s memory plaguing her, taunting her as if he whispers into her ears that she will destroy them, that she will destroy herself. Yet, she seeks no comfort in the emptied throne room, but rather finds solace within the confides of strategies, murals painted against cloth adorning the walls. Here, she’d thought, here is where they’d fallen in love, where she imagined others would tell stories of how they’d plotted the demise of a country together, or perhaps simply where the wicked witch seduced the once bright king and drew him into her darkness. For, no one trusted women adorned in armour. A woman in power, to them, she’d wondered, was something to fear
Her company, Jove and Persia, and their unwavering loyalty, had done nothing but cause Helen to delve further. To find an anger within her bones, lonely and echoing for the daughter lost and the love slain. War, it had seemed, left no room for love. War was bloodshed and hunger, it was watching cities burn if only to ache to scream into a void at the edge of the woods. If this is what the gods had wanted, if they’d sought to mould her into a monster, then so be it. Where she was once soft, a girl whose dreams encapsulated beauty itself, she had grown rigid, a reckoning upon the world itself. Maternal instinct to forge flames in the name of her daughter. Her darling, her dearest, her dead.
It’s with these hungry eyes, these tired eyes, heavily lidded in which she manages to focus upon Cedric. Her confidant. It puzzles her if only for a moment, that when she speaks he ceases to engage. Perhaps the paranoia had begun to eat away at her decaying flesh, once glistening now reflective of nothing but the moonlight. She was sure he had known her better than she’d ever known herself. Had stood by her side as she’d spoke of false promises and in turn, had lied alongside with her unbeknownst. Had she dragged a man, a god, into the depths of her hell so far that his would be wings had been scorched by the flames she’d brought to life herself? The black hearted Blood Bringer, they’d called her. Their tyrant queen. The woman who’d make it rain blood if she could only sit back and watch as others became drenched in her sins. Jawline tightens, his silence speaks more than he ever could. It echoes, filling the room with a coldness in which Helen could scarcely imagine.
“What say you, Cedric?” She rises, a strength ridden figure of darkness, lithe digits now drumming against tabletop as gaze slices through air as if daggers. How she wishes to dig into his flesh, a desire to see blood trickle down his throat if only to teach him a lesson. There’s a growlbiting at her cheeks as it claws its way up past her throat. To keep an impatient woman waiting, to make a queen even fathom the idea of begging. “Where would you like to be when this is over ? You’ve sworn fealty to me once before, found yourself enamoured by the vision in which we’ve both shared so well.” A vision in which had never saw the destruction of a nation, the hunger of its people, the corruption of its crown. “Will you, or will you not, stand beside me once more?” Arched brow, her heart aches to beat against hollowed chest. For he had known her when the world was still bright, when their futures were sealed to be written in history books as something to be celebrated. Now, however, she’d found herself down a darkened path, a vengeful , iron fist replacing the once gentle open palm. A girl who saw beauty in florals and song had been replaced with a woman who’d seen to eradicate all that came with such things.
It’s with a steady gaze that she studies him, watches the twitch in his lip at her words and hears the sunken gulp that emits from his throat.
“Speak.” The tone is rough, hoarse in delivery as she feels the rage catch ahold of every world that slides from her tongue with an unforgiven fury. Hand, with one swift movement, slices through thickened air to topple over goblets that sit dormant upon table top. She prays they flinch, prays that the entirety of them beg for forgiveness. “When I offer you something such as this, I’d advise you to make the right decision, Cedric. As Jove has, as Persia has. Are you not as capable as them, do you find your heart to be softened for justice?” Her words are likened to venom, a catapult into a silence struck room as she takes steady strides towards him. “I assure you, they know whose side is the right one in this war. Do not make a fool of yourself, or of me.”
