CRIMSON

019

It was too late.

They all found out, of course.

I entered the dusty throne room, my bare feet leaving fine traces in the dust. This specific one hadn't been touched since my father was in power. My hands tightly gripped Gray's sword.

Slowly, as if in a trance, I approached the throne, which sat lonely in the middle of the hall. A cold wind swept snowflakes into the room, and the crimson-red curtains blew. As I continued walking I started to remember all the terrible deeds and sacrifices I'd made to have the authority to enter this room on my own. Were all the lives that I'd ended really worth it? I barely remember when I started feeling so empty inside.

Finally, I stood on the golden stairs leading up to the throne. I looked up at it, and the throne seemed to look down on me. Slowly, my shoes clicking with each step I reached the mighty throne. I turned around, facing the ancient walls of the grand room, then sunk into the chair.

It wasn't me, a girl who sat on the throne, but a skeleton. Bones barely clinging to each other, and two, empty voids were my eyes. All this time, what I didn't realize was that the things I held so high were the very things that would knock me down. Now, I was a skeleton seated on my throne of murder and destruction. Every time I sacrificed someone due to my thirst for power, I lost myself more and more. My skin evaporating, my emotions disappearing, and my warmth fading away. 

Revenge had turned me into a skeleton.

I raised Gray's sword and pointed it towards myself. I remembered the shadows in the ballroom that day, and what they told me. "You are not a queen." that's what they repeated in my head over and over. They were right, of course. I had no right to sit on this sacred throne. I stole a title that never belonged to me in the first place.

"God save the queen," I whispered faintly to myself.

Then I stabbed myself straight in the heart with Gray's sword. 

With the very blade that should've killed me a year ago.

Did I really kill myself that night if my own greed had killed me on the inside months ago? If my own jealousy had already destroyed myself and everything I loved?

My dead body went limp, and the sword dropped from my hand, rolling all the way down the steps.

The wind blew once again, the crimson curtains billowing and a few snowflakes showered onto the corpse's lifeless face.

New dust settles on old, all with the same fate. 

The lonely throne in the dusty hall is waiting for its next visitor.