Sand
Sand was seeping endlessly into the room just after I felt a sharp knock to the back of my head. In an instant the scene vanished. My worries of needing to get out… All of it was gone.
In my dreams it was a scene that I once recalled. When I was around five, I fell in a well. I had broken my legs so I could only sit there and stare miserably as the water poured down on me. It soaked me to the skin. I screamed for hours, feeling the cold penetrate every bone and muscle in my body. And when they found me, I was half dead already.
I opened my eyes to a brightly lit room. I studied the gold banisters, remembering a time when I was once a princess. I had a kingdom at my command once. Its people were beautiful and loyal, and I was loved. Now, I was just a hired soldier to fight the private wars of businessmen who were too self-important to understand the meaning of peace, to understand the meaning of anything other than greed. But then I was bound to their greed, all at once pure and perfectly tainted. There is no way out of the devil’s bargain now. I am one of them.
There was a time once, when my husband would have told me to have faith in the people. Everything would be all right just as long as we believed in the good of humanity. What a load of crap. He, who was also once the Prince of Staign, was the type of man who breathed peace, spoke amnesty, and practiced humble dignity, treading lightly on matters that licked his feet with flames and people who cast down his name with swords in their hands.
“So, they sent down a mercenary, huh?”
The voice that spoke to me was heavy and bold, trained with years of questioning and torturing countless others before me. I wasn’t the first to reach him, not by far, and probably wouldn’t be the last either.
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