{ HIATUS }
Y/N Clover had spent most of her childhood receiving education inside of her home but by the summer of her coming 10th birthday, she was forced to attend a public school, one known in Gavaldon for its prestigious success of graduates. But...
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_______________________________ 2 Years Later Sophie's POV -
Sophie has waited all her life to be kidnapped.
But tonight, all the other children of Gavaldon writhed in their beds. If the School Master took them, they'd never return. Never lead a full life. Never see their family again. Tonight these children dreamt of a red-eyed thief with the body of a beast, come to rip them from their sheets and stifle their screams.
Sophie dreamt of princes instead.
She had arrived at a castle ball thrown in her honor, only to find the hall filled with a hundred suitors and no other girls in sight. Here for the first time were boys who deserved her, she thought as she walked down the line. Hair shiny and thick, muscles taut through shirts, skin smooth and tan, beautiful and attentive like princes should be. But just as she came to one who seemed better than the rest, with brilliant blue eyes and ghostly white hair, the one who felt like Happily Ever After . . . a hammer broke through the walls of the room and smashed the princes to shards.
_______________________________
Sophie's eyes opened to see the bright sun seep through the wedges of the window.
"Father, if I don't sleep for nine hours, my eyes will look swollen."
"Everyone's prattling on that you're to be taken this year," her father said, nailing the misshapen bar over her bedroom window, now completely obscured by locks, spikes, and screws. "They tell me to shed your hair, muddy your face, as if I believe all this fairy-tale hogwash. By no ones getting in here tonight. That's for sure." He pounded a deafening crack as exclamation.
Sophie rubbed her ears and frowned at her once lovely window, now something you'd see in a witch's den. "Locks. Why didn't anyone think of that before?"
"I don't know why they all think it's you," he said, silver hair slick with sweat. "If it's goodness that School Master fellow wants, he'll take Gunilda's daughter."
Sophie tensed, "Belle?"
"Perfect child that one is," he said. "Brings her father home-cooked lunches at the mill. Gives the leftovers to the poor hag in the square."
Sophie heard the edge in her fathers voice. She had never once cooked a full meal for him, even after her mother died. But she had a good reason, the oil and smoke would clog her pores! Though, she had to admit, it was a sore point. Her father didn't go hungry though. Instead, she offered him her own favorite foods; mashed beef, broccoli stew, boiled asparagus, steamed spinach. He hadn't ballooned into a blimp like Belle's father, precisely because she hadn't brought him home-cooked lamb fricassees and cheese soufflés at the mill. As for the poor hag in the square, that old crone, despite claiming being hunger day after day, was fat. And if Belle has anything to do with it, then she wasn't good at all, but the worst kind of evil.
