Warning: 18+ readers only; this blog is dark and full of terrors!
A princess sits in her castle. Only it isn't really her castle, but her prince's. They keep her there to be forgotten, for the convenience of her prince's family. She is unwed, but with child, and she is kept in her tower.
A bloody bed, a squealing baby. And that sound penetrates her heart, a piercing needle that fills her with a deep maternal longing. But where is her prince? He hasn't come for days as she lays in red sheets. They take the baby away, and she is kept in her tower.
When her prince returns, he is but a fragment of his former self; his eyes gleam violet, his skin white like marble, his hair almost as pale, but he still looks at her with all the love in this world. She is dying, and in every pain imaginable, so he takes her from her tower.
He drains her of blood but fills her with his. She doesn't understand why, or how, or what has become of her prince. He tells her they'll live forever now, they'll stay in the moonlight and live by the night. Her eyes turn from green to white, and her hair is the brightest red of which she couldn't have dreamed. They travel across Germany from Munich to Hanover, then to Denmark, then over to London. They travel for two centuries together, slipping in and out of each other's love.
The princess wishes. She has everything she could want in her empty family, except a child. All she can dream of is a child of her own. She dreams and dreams of this, alone in her tower.
She sees a beautiful boy, a boy she could have as her own, and immediately she longs for him. So she watches, and she waits and wants and wishes. She watches him as he prays in church, serving at the altar; wishes to make him her own, to make him hers forever; still, she observes, and follows, and yearns.
But her prince grows weary of her delusions. He leaves her for nights and nights, returning to their castle in the woods only once he grows tired of the soil. Until one night when he returns, and the boy is in the cellar.
She tells her prince she had to catch him, that they were going to take him away from her. They had seen him with another boy, and they would take him and kill him, and she would lose another child.
The prince, finally tired of the princess and her possessive ways, leaves that night and never returns. But the princess isn't angry or sad or lonely. She has a new family now, in the cellar.
She keeps the boy safe, letting his hair grow, and feeding him enough to keep him healthy and strong as she had found him. For one year, she keeps him safe until she is sure he is the perfect forever-age; eighteen.
Over the years, the princess has become a strong Locust; her powers of mind control far outweigh her prince's, and so she uses this to keep the boy her son always. As she turns him, she cleanses his memory and everything that made him who he was. He becomes hers and only hers.
Only, he isn't really hers. The princess can only erase so much of him, and still, the most troubling part remains. She knows of his desires, his loathsome tastes, things of which she could not rid him. And no matter how hard she tries, she cannot keep him as her own as she had wished.
But it is a prince that takes him from her, finally. She can't endure it, nor bear to tell the boy what he would be so hurt to know; that his prince is also her own. And so, she locks herself in her tower.
The princess can not endure her loneliness, her jealousy, for long. It consumes her like the disease from which she'd once died, pulled apart, tortured from the inside out. She finally leaves her tower for the last time.
Her prince's resting place is a far cry from the castles in which he had once lived, from the dilapidated prison she had walled herself inside. When she sets her clouded eyes on him, it fills her with love and hate and every emotion in between. But she hates what she can't have; love. She tells her prince she will kill her sweet boy if he does not leave him, and if the boy ever finds love again, she will threaten the same. She vows never to let anyone have him, to let anyone have what she can't. And so she makes sure that her prince can never return to the boy.
But what the boy doesn't know is that almost everything in his life and his death is a lie; a lie created by the princess to keep him safe, to keep him hers forever.
~
Norra's eyes sear into mine, and I clutch at my hair as an immense pain shoots through my skull. I can feel all those locked away memories of my life forcefully push back into my head, flashing like a hundred lights turning on at once; the church, my family, the boy I had loved then. He had been the son of one of the most prestigious and wealthy families in the village, and I was nothing but their farmhand. He was supposed to meet me there. But he never came. Instead, Norra... Norra took me.
"Why?" I whisper, my tears dry now and silent. "Why me?"
Norra's face is soft, aglow with the remaining candlelight. "Because you were beautiful, and I wished you were mine." She frowns, coming closer to me. "They didn't appreciate you. They sent you to work on that awful farm for that horrible family! And that boy... he was nothing!"
I look down at Nathaniel still in my arms, like a broken doll, his breathing scarce but there, barely clinging to life. "Did you kill him? Like you did Johann? Like you're trying to do to Nathaniel?"
Norra stares at me in silence. She blinks slowly, and without words, I feel her rage. Of course, I killed him. No one is worthy of you. And Nathaniel must die too.
I spring to my feet as the power surges inside me again, only this time it burns in my chest, relighting the petrol, thundering through my core. "No!" I scream, pushing my hands out towards Norra with fire in my bones, with a flaming axe in my heart. "I won't let you kill him!"
She flies across the room, drifting like she's nothing before slamming into the concrete wall and falling to the floor. Chunks of brick and glass fall to the ground, glittering around her like stars, before she pulls herself up again. I run towards her, watching as she floats into the air.
My feet lift from the ground, and I lose myself in the air. At first, I think it's Norra, and she's about to send me plummeting into the earth. But she's gawking at me, and I realise... Am I doing this?
"Oh how impressive, my darling," Norra says, smirking with contempt. "But that's nothing compared to what I can do..."
Her eyes glance behind me, and I turn. Nathaniel convulses on the ground, blood still oozing from his open mouth as he cries in pain.
"What are you doing to him?!" I push my arms forwards with that fiery energy still seething inside of me, this time sending her up in the air and into the broken light fixture.
Norra's haunting laugh echos through the broken church like something demented. "You can't hurt me, my sweet. But there is something you can do to stop me."
"What? What is it?!" With a torn heart, I look between Nathaniel's writhing, dying body, and Norra's wicked face.
"Come with me. Stay with me forever. And I'll let your darling live." She gracefully grounds herself, her bloody dress dragging on the ground as she walks towards me, her eyes pleading now. "I'll tell you where Johann is. We both know he's who you truly love. Not this mortal child."
I swallow. Johann... "He's dead."
"Is he?" Norra looks around as if she's trying to remember something important, finger tapping on her chin. "Or do you just think he is?"
"No matter what you do, no matter who you hurt, I will not come with you! I'll never go anywhere with you!"
I'm brought swiftly to my knees, the bones in my shins cracking on the concrete and an excruciating pain courses through my entire body. "You're a liar!" I cry out through the agony. "Johann is dead! He'd never have left me!"
"Who do you think tore you from your stupid wallowing grave? Who brought you here?"
"He's dead!" I scream again. I can't see for my bloody tears, for the unbearable pain travelling through my bones. I replay the voice I'd heard at the mausoleum, that familiar, comforting voice. "He's dead..."
Norra laughs again, short, in a single breath. "You know he's not. Don't you remember?"
I clutch my head, pulling at my hair, clawing at my skin so hard my fingers are bloody. It was so long ago, I can't remember... I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to.
I see Johann's face. His beautiful face, his hypnotic eyes, his porcelain skin... He left me, left me alone in that flat in Chelsea. He told me he didn't love me... I can feel myself try to scream, but no sound comes out. I didn't want to believe him, but he left. He didn't die. He left.
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