Evil Fleet || sge oc

Prologue

Prologue

Liana of Maidenvale lay on her rug, her intense, fuchsia-black eyes boring into the chandelier that hung on her ceiling. It was dark outside, but a lone candle flickered on the chandelier, casting eerie shadows across the room. In the blackness, Liana's eyes practically glowed, making her look almost possessed. Her black dress fanned out on the ground and her hair, even blacker, spread out from her head like a crown.

Liana liked it, in the rare moments, when she could just lock herself in her room and push away all thoughts of castles and towers and crowns and princes. It was stupid, something only the most Good would fuss at, and she felt nauseated at being treated like a fairy-tale princess.

If she could kill just one person, it would make her mind stop racing, if only for a moment, at what would become of her. Sadly, even she had compassion, and she lay now, pondering if that would make her too Good to be Evil. Once, when she was small, she had broken a vase carved of obsidian by dropping it from the second-floor landing of her family's house, aiming for the head of the king's representative that had come to the house. She hated the royals of Maidenvale and wanted him to go away. She'd missed, and the representative was unscathed. Feeling guilt when seeing the smashed pieces, then feeling even guiltier that she would feel such guilt, she'd found a way to blame the maid who was dusting the potted plant beside her afterward as a way of redemption for her Good feelings.

Liana looked toward the door, zeroing in on the slit underneath it above the floor, where light shone through and footsteps of maids and butlers and who-knows-who shuffled and clanked. She watched as one by one, minute after minute, the footsteps went away. As the lights dimmed. Even the one candle she'd bothered to light on her own chandelier, burned until it snuffed out and left Liana in total darkness.

At some point, Liana fell asleep, long into the night, for she didn't hear the rattling of the window. She didn't notice an intruder. And she didn't notice the stymph egg placed gently on her bed.