Spin Me Sweet Tales

Chapter Seven

When I cannot run from the dangers of my life, I learned to block out the terror. Before I knew what the word trauma meant, I suffered as a child, and the level of suffering I'd gone through made my body adapt to terrible changes. My brain discovered a way to distract itself from the worst moments of my life. I never forget, but I replace the memories I cannot allow myself to feel with smaller inconveniences.

Today, I use my defense mechanisms I learned as a child to deal with a forced marriage to a monster. Lahesia speaks, but I don't hear her. Not really. My mind deviates away from my wedding and makes me think of a smaller, much more manageable problem.

My chestnut locks are in endless whorls of curled intricacy. The strands flow down the expanse of my body with no grievance, but the fifteen-pound crown is weighing heavily against my skull. While the silvery accessory is undoubtedly beautiful and decorated in a multitude of gems worthy of a queen of this realm, my hair is interwoven with the crown to keep it in place, and it is pulling out my hair by the roots.

The pain is minimal, but the fright that presses down against my chest at the thought of marrying a handsome beast is too overwhelming to process; therefore, I focus on my hair. As Lahesia reads from her ancient tome, I do not listen. Instead, I wince as tendrils threaten to leave my skull. My captor's hands are enraptured in mine, colder than ice. His voice of silk and danger pierces my chest like a blade, but the sound is muffled by the minute sound of my hair breaking against the rough force of the headpiece intermingled with my hair.

Just as distraction worked as a child, diverting my attention to the tense hairstyle that rips single pieces of hair from my head works. I'm able to centralize on a manageable inconvenience to distract myself from the treacherous truth. I drift into the pain, letting it consume my senses.

But just like I cannot pretend Oraxto is a poorly contrived dream, my efforts to distract myself are stolen away. A knife appears in gold dust in Lahesia's hand. The black blade glistens like a starry night, but as I stare at the item that is extended towards my abductor and future husband, any distraction I allowed my headpiece to become dissipates.

Now, as King Shaharuddin removes his hands from mine, I find true fright. I cannot dissuade myself from facing the black blade and my imminent death. When the murderer of wives grasps the handle, all that I can think is how the redness of my blood will not be seen on a weapon as dark as this one. With his free hand, he reaches for me again, but I flinch away.

Just a moment ago, magic that I could not fully fathom paralyzed me and made me incapable of refusing this marriage. I can still feel it, that immovable power spinning around my arms and deep within my bones, but I push through the impossibility. Just as his fingers graze my inner wrist, I stumble backwards.

I only move two steps, but it's enough that his index finger slips from its momentary hold. Deeba and Khaivya, who stand near the floor-length glass doors to the far right as my bridesmaids, audibly gasp. Lahesia, however, smiles her dangerous grin. The infallible expression on my soon-to-be-husband's face fractures ever so slightly, and if I didn't know better, then I'd think he is stifling a grin.

My feet yearn to run, to escape past the two doors the witches stand in front of, and I want to search for another unusually shaded purple door and go home. I desire the smell of the Burger King across the street from my apartment complex, and the raucous laughter of my roommate. The familiar buzzing of my phone as my mom calls, and the taste of freedom upon my tongue, are becoming distant and nearly obsolete, but I wish for them all the same.

But I can't move any more than those two steps and the helplessness weasels its way back inside my body.

King Shaharuddin breaks the brief distance between us, and I whimper when he lifts my dainty wrist once more. He lays my hand, palm up, against the top of his. I attempt to awaken my strength once again, to separate myself from him and his blade as I previously did, but I fail. I can only whimper as the tip of the knife sits in the center of my palm. The man's monolid, obsidian eyes stare at the blade that teases my unscathed, pale flesh, but he does not penetrate the skin. His gaze drifts upwards until it lands on my face, heating where his attention centralizes.