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Natalya had completed her descent into insanity. She was no longer human; a demon had taken her place.
Natalya didn't waste her time with the General anymore. She spends her afternoons in her throne room and her nights watching Nadia cut her perfect skin. Nadia now had scars littering across her stomach, her thighs, and her breasts. Natalya had seven of Nadia's perfect dresses in her possession now, folded neatly under bed. Anzhelina remained suspicious, but she didn't say anything to anyone, so she proved to be unimportant.
Either way, everything ended tonight. Tonight she would give herself into the rumors completely.
^^^ "You're dismissed, Anzhelina."
"Yes, tsesarevich Natalya," she assents, giving Natalya a brief curtsy before leaving her chambers. By the time the thud of the heavy doors finished echoing through Natalya's stone walls, Nadia's petticoat had fallen to the ground, its wispy fabric coloring the floor with white.
"Today will be a little different," Natalya announces, her cold eyes leveling Nadia with a menacing stare. "Get on my bed."
Nadia didn't ask questions anymore. She just followed orders.
Natalya takes the dagger from her bedside as she had done the previous seven nights, and places it in Nadia's left palm.
"Open all of your old wounds," Natalya commands, her own petticoat whirling around her body as she moves around her bed.
Nadia complies. Soon enough, she has seven perfect cuts marring her perfect skin. By this point, the blood loss is dripping Nadia into unconsciousness, but Natalya wants her to feel her next action.
Natalya mounts her bed, folding her legs over Nadia's body, slipping the dagger out of Nadia's weak grasp. She wants to play with the knife for a little while, to toy with Nadia's mortality, but she can see the life leaving Nadia's eyes, and Natalya wants her to feel the pain she has planned.
She begins by placing her dagger on the left side of Nadia's neck, piercing her perfect skin for the first time in all of these nights. The power is uncontrollably delicious. She slowly slices through the flesh of Nadia's neck, her eyes never leaving the thick line of blood that forms in the wake of the dagger's blade. When Natalya is sure that Nadia's death is thorough, she dips her head into the crevice between Nadia's chin and her collarbone, sucking on the wound she created. The blood fills her quickly enough to dizzy her, and she can't tell if it's minutes or hours later when the guards rush into her room and tear her away from Nadia's dead body.
"You're going to burn for your actions," she hears the General declare as she is dragged through the crowded halls of her castle. Everyone is shouting and chanting burn, burn, burn.
All she can do is laugh because the flames can't hurt her. They were already dancing across her skin, the red-orange-blue a comforting color. It gave her power, the fire curling around her body like wings. She was immortal and no one could hurt her any more.
