I was even down here.
My heart stopped when I peered into a window and saw someone curled up in a ball in the middle of their cell. Their
clothes were dirty, their feet bare and covered in sores. When the air was sucked out of my lungs, the person lifted their head
up, the hollows of their eyes staring back at me. Kathlyn.
She looked like a shell of the woman I once knew, who I once claimed as my sister. She shuddered and I heard her rasping
for air. Heartbroken at the sight of her, I wanted to reach out for her, to hold her tightly. Although I was still angry and hurt over
her betrayal, I still felt love for her.
“Kathlyn,” I muttered as we looked upon each other.
“Princess. You came. Came to see me,” she rasped out.
Her voice was broken, she was a shell of herself.
“I…I wanted to see you.”
“To see what your king has done to me?”
“I’m sorry, I did not know.”
I did know. I knew because I’d heard the screams. I’d heard the servants whisper about the torture they were being put
through. I knew and even though I tried to stop it, I’d given up trying.
She menacingly laughed as a smile crept across her face. She got up and lunged at bars. Her arms reached through the bars
and gripped my throat tightly. I couldn’t breathe. Her grimy, bloodstained hands latched around my throat and squeezed.
“LIAR! MURDERESS!” she shouted. “I WILL KILL YOU!!”
My friend was long gone. The person who lived within her body was not the person I once knew. Tears streamed down my
face as the fear of passing out misted over my eyes. I was losing consciousness. It was only a second or two later a blade came
swinging down in the space between us and sliced those two hands from her wrists.
Screaming in agony and pain, she roared backwards as I fell, the hands still around my neck. I wasn’t sure who ripped them
off me or who had attacked her, but I was grateful to them.
“HIGHNESS! Are you alright!?”
The guard. I could feel the warm splatter of blood as it ran down my face, my dress now ruined with blood and whatever
else was in the room. Catching my breath, I could hear a cackle, filled with malicious intent.
“Don’t move,” the guard ordered me as he shouted for others to arrive.
Seconds later, I was being lifted off the floor, carried out of the room, and brought into the hallway. I was shocked to see
Nicholas as he stood at the end of the corridor. The blood drained from his face as he took in the sight of me.
“Take her highness to her room, fetch a healer. I will join her shortly.”