𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐎𝐍𝐁𝐎𝐑𝐍 | ❝Monsters don't get happy endings.❞
Rennen of Skellige was a cold-blooded killer, an assassin from the mysterious Dark Brotherhood. She liked to think that a life of blood and bruises was what she was made for, a life that was...
‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ CHAPTER ELEVEN ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙ a letter from cintra
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HER FATHER'S OFFICE was the complete opposite of when she first took a step there, warm and inviting with the dying fire in the fireplace and the candles in the last few spurts of life. Rain pattered against the windows and stones, gentle music that could only be heard from the gentlest voice. A bard in the centre of a quiet tavern, smooth fingers against the strings of a lute as they let out the sound of something heavenly from their mouth.
Rennen had only heard that voice twice in her life.
She let her fingers brush against the wood of her father's desk, the edges of opened letters pressing just beneath the tip. He had cleaned the desk since she had last been there, the majority of the letters she had seen nowhere to be found when she searched through the drawers of the desk and between pages of books. It took her a moment to look at the fireplace. Between the dying flames and the mostly-burnt wood, there were pieces of paper that had not burned completely. Remnants.
Whatever her father, the Jarl of Skellige, did not want others to see, he burned.
She looked down at the scars in her arms. Old wounds that healed through scabs she had picked to make herself feel something, to push away the numbness that had eaten at her since she left Urialla Harbour as a child. The burns from hot scalpels pressed against her skin, pushed down down down until something came out. Blood? Had it been red or had it been another colour?
Beneath the pages of a book that was written in Elder Speech, Rennen found a letter still inside its envelope. From Cintra, written in the eloquent hand of Queen Calanthe. She had heard many things about Cintra's queen: at fourteen winters she gained the throne after her father's death, and at fifteen she won her first battle at Hochebuzz against Nazair. All before she was made to marry some man.
It was the very thing the letter was for. An invitation to celebrate the princess's fifteenth year of life, yet between the sentences the assassin could see what was hidden. Whoever married the princess would become King of Cintra; the queen wanted an alliance with Skellige and her younger brother was a candidate for not only the princess' hand but for the crown of Cintra.
She tried her hardest to imagine Rullul as a king, but all she could see was a bloody crown upon his head and a cruel smile on his lips. He was not kind. As a child, he used to catch birds and smash their heads with a rock as he laughed wildly at the sound they made. If they did not die fast enough, he would continue to smash until the head was a mess of feathers and insides and blood. And then, his laughter would ring like the call of warhorn.
Rennen crushed the letter in her palm and threw it on the desk, hurried out of her father's office. Rage pilled inside of her, a forest fire prepared to set everything aflame until there was nothing but ashes and soot. Her brother could not be the one to have Princess's hand, even less the crown of Cintra. If he did. . .
