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Arthur took great pleasure in beginning my vanquishment that very night.
It was supposed to be our wedding night. The most sacred night of my married life. The night I gave myself to my husband, my king.
Though, had I not already been given to him by another? Bequeathed like a casket of rich jewels?
Now my maidenhead was stripped from me like the stolen treasures of a kingdom’s vault.
All while a group of male advisors from the king’s court sat in the adjoining room, official witnesses to my desecration.
My tattered wedding dress was sent back to my family in Lyonesse. I assume they placed it on the funeral pyre alongside my father’s body. That they burned both together, my freedom and his life.
Instead of an honored pawn, a noble queen, I had become—in the span of a night and a day—a cruel king’s plaything. The subject of his abuse. The target of his rage.
For surely, Arthur accused, I must have known what my father and brother had planned all along. Surely, I must have arrived in Camelot carrying the knowledge of my own betrayal like a poisonous seed.
When I could offer no new knowledge, no information in my defense, Arthur gave up and instead directed his ire towards the other Lyonessian nobles. The ones who had been eagerly counting the days until our wedding, waiting for the time when they would finally be released and permitted to return home.
Half of their heads hang on the castle walls alongside Lord Cumbrage’s.
The women... Well, most of them fared worse.
Above ground, the Rose Court is a beautiful place. Below ground, not even the strongest whitewash can cleanse the charnel house of horrors that Arthur has created for his amusement.
My cage was bright and gilded. Rays of sunshine filtered in, illuminating my pain as I waited day after day for the man who was not my husband to return at night to use me as he saw fit.
Until, one day, a voice spoke to me. A voice I had heard before but only in my dreams, always wise and gentle—but this time, above all else, brave.
It urged me to flee. It showed me the way.
I took it.
I left my people behind.
In my gilded cage, I had dreamed of death. I had not dared to dream of freedom.
And now that freedom is mine again, I am not sure I wish to keep it. This punishment of existence. This belonging of myself to only me. It is not a self I want. It is not a self I chose.
All the while,shelooks at me. Her eyes deep and guarded. Guarding me.
She guards me, even against myself.
