Forgotten Monsters

Chapter 7- Assassin

Sorry I haven't been updating. I want to thank everyone who has voted and commented. Please vote if you like it, and tell me if you don't, really, I want your feedback. I'm suffering from Resa withdrawal, because, unfortunately, she isn't in this chapter. Thanks for reading!

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The beautiful girl stood behind her queen every day, mimicking the pose of the girl chosen to look exactly like her. When the two girls stood side by side, they could be the same person. Except that if one looked closely, they'd see the cruel curve to one girl's bow lips, or the jagged nails on her weaker counterparts fingers. 

And the proud girl knew that the queen preferred her to all the other decorative pieces. Her apathetic smirk made her seem aloof which only served to make the queen seem more mystical. She was the queen's favorite possession, the finest accessory the monarch had in her possession. 

Except, the lovely teenager wasn't really a statue, she had a name and a past and a future. She had a sister who the queen had killed for a splash of red wine. 

Tessa couldn't stop seeing her little sister's legs buckle as she died. Waves of fury and nausea rolled over her, blurring her eyes with a mixture of tears and anger. She couldn't hear anything past the vicious beating of her pulse, she thought that she may explode. But she was used to staying quiet and still, and as her sister was removed by a pair of clinical servants, she refused to leave her position behind her beloved queen. 

Her chin may have taken on a harsher angle, her clear blue eyes slicing though the repugnant gluttons who always graced her royal majesty's table. She would not look at the queen. Tessa thought that the sight of her cursed youth would push her to the brink, so she receded into herself and waited. 

She would not cry. She would not let them see her pain.

It was hours before the queen retreated to her bedchamber. Tessa followed her into her rooms, the other girl turned her large eyes towards the proud girl in sympathy. Tessa glared at her fiercely and shook her head. It was strange how someone who appeared so uncannily similar to her could look so different. 

"Leave me," Tessa hissed at the girl and the girl withdrew. Tessa entered her queen's rooms. She did not think she would ever leave them.

The queen sat at her dressing table. One small hand touched her smooth cheek almost reverently. Tessa supposed that even after so many years, it must be unnerving to see a foreign face staring back from the mirror. The magic she had used to give her beauty had erased her true face. Tessa stood behind her, waiting for the queen to ask for her bath. 

Instead, the queen turned to look at her pretty servant. "How old were you when the war ended?" she asked, her voice slight and reedy in the dark. 

Tessa didn't have to think hard to remember. Her whole childhood had been defined by the war. She hadn't been born when the spoiled younger sister had run away with her young king, or when the queen's father left the kingdom in his eldest daughter's hands. But the hatred between her city and the desert country to the south of the mountains, that she could remember. Trapped between a sworn enemy and the uncharted lands, there was little trade, and Tessa couldn't remember a day when her mother wasn't going hungry to feed her children. Mostly she remembered the cold, and the hollow eyes of thieves in the alleys, the fear of the soldiers who misused their unsupervised power. 

And then one day it was over, the sister and her husband were dead, and the only survivor was their aimless son. He must have had no honor, Tessa thought in disgust, if he was so eager to serve his family's murderer.