A HEART AS DARK AS MINE caos caliban x oc

Queendom (edited)

THE CASTLE FELT DIFFERENT UPON MY RETURN. It had been his for a long while, but now it felt like no inch of it belonged to me. It felt like stepping into a strangers house and being told it was supposed to feel like home. All it felt was empty.

Even the belongings scattered about my vanity, just how I had left them that morning, no longer felt like mine. Maybe it was the ring on my finger. Maybe it was the shift of authority in the palace. The way that suddenly I was looked at with no more respect than the servants wandering about the halls.

I slipped away from my vanity, making a conscious effort to avoid looking at the circlet on thorns upon my finger. And as my gaze wandered I couldn't help but notice something laid out in my unmade bed. A necklace. A dainty silver chain and a small cross.

"Abigail." I suppose she had finally abandoned her faith.

I turned to find her standing in the doorway, tears in her bright eyes.

She drew closer. Wary. Wary of me.

"What's wrong?" I asked her gently.

"They're here." Abigail says, her voice shaking. "They're here and there nothing like I imagined."

I stiffened. "Who's here?"

"A girl." She says. "A girl called Sabrina. And the angels."

My blood runs cold.

"In the throne room."

I don't know if I want to run. If I want to flee and never look back, or if I'm ready to face them. I don't think I'll ever be truly ready to face them. But here they are. In my palace. Ready to take me again. And I cannot let them.

This place my no longer feel like my own, but it still is. Deep down I am still the queen. Powerless and cast aside perhaps- but I am still the queen.

"Stay here." I said, my throat dry. "Stay here and stay safe. I'll be back, okay?"

I didn't have to look back to know that she had snatched the cross from my bed. That she had dropped to her knees and uttered a quick prayer to a god who had not shown her mercy in a long time. But she still prayed. He was still god.

I hated how alike we were, I realised as I strode on trembling legs.

I couldn't remember the last time I had ever allowed anyone to make me feel this afraid.

But I still walked. That was something, right?

The quiet in the halls only thickened my creeping sense of dread, my senses heightened with fear; each creek or echo striking me with a new wave of nausea.

Pull yourself together. You are the queen.

This time it was my fathers voice in my head. And for once I was grateful for it.

I took a sharp breath, steeling myself as I prepared for whatever I would discover on the other side of that door. And this time I didn't think, I just walked.

The doors opened of their own accord, slowly, with a creak, as though some ancient mechanism was whirring to life inside the rotted wood. The moment I stepped inside they slammed shut behind me, and a lock clicked into place.

I battled down the bile rising in my throat as I scanned the room. Demons I had thought fearsome and powerful were rendered frightened husks threatened by the angels holy water. Strangely, their own fear made me feel a little less stupid. I took comfort in it. I recognised many faces, many names, amongst them Lilith. I had not seen her in a long while, since far before the curse Caliban and I had placed on her unborn son. I felt a pang of guilt at the sight of her. Her skin was pasty and her cheeks sunken, her under eyes a bruised purple it was as though her child's loss of immortality had stolen hers too. From her position on the floor, Lilith clutched her swollen stomach, tears in her eyes as she mumbled to her unborn son.