Elwin doesn’t know if she’s always been the way that she is. She doesn’t know if she escaped from her mother’s womb, warm yet so strangely cold, or if she just woke up one day, tired of feeling it all. What she does know, is that she really craves chicken right now.

With a grunt, she raises from her bed, her back aching from the extra weight lumped solidly on her front. This parasite has been attached to her for over eight months now, and every day she’s grown more and more over it. If she had the tools and the capabilities, she’s not sure if she would be able to stop herself from removing it prematurely.

She sighs, pushing her long auburn hair out of her face. Elwin waddles over to the door that she knows is locked and picks the bell off its hook. She rings it.

And nothing happens.

Her lip curls. Elwin rings it again, this time a little more aggressively, and she finally receives a response. The locks in her door click, the old gears turning as the knob on the other side is rolled. Her prison had been decorated with red and white, two of her favorite colors. The tall steel door had a woven tapestry covering it, as if that would detract from the fact that her father had locked her away for months.

She hadn’t seen daylight since the day they returned from their voyage. That was also the last time she had seen her father’s face. Had she been younger and less composed, she would have attempted to put up a fight. She would have kicked and punched and stabbed with the dagger she always kept hidden at her chest.

She would have yelled and screamed and cursed and bitten. She would have done all the things a lady never ought to do.

And then she likely would have been subdued with drugs. She scowls at the thought. Elwin knew what would await her when she chose to do what she did. She knew that the consequences would be harsh, even more so once this child of hers is delivered. But for once, she had wanted to live for herself. And what a dream it had been.

What a dream he had been.

The stone floor grunts as the heavy door slides against it. In stumbles a guard. Elwin takes a step back, her eyes roving over the man standing in an ill-fitted uniform with a handkerchief to his nose. Are guards even allowed to carry handkerchiefs? It seems like that would be against uniform. “Where is Edwar?” She questions the unfamiliar man.

Edwar had been her personal guard for a little over five years now. He is the only man that the emperor ever trusted to be around the princess. Elwin knows that it was only because the poor guard had been sterilized in his youth. The man at her door shivers before pulling his handkerchief down.

He first bows before answering her, “Edwar has been released from his position, Princess.” He shudders, as if every word takes an immense amount of energy to push out. That makes no sense. Edwar, while dotting on her behind closed doors, was immensely loyal to Elwin’s father. The emperor would never dismiss a man like him, as they were so hard to come by in these trying times.

Elwin doesn’t let her confusion show on her face, instead opting to look over this new guard in greater detail. He can barely hold himself upright. Who would send a man like him to guard her? “You’re sick. You must leave.” His eyes widen, the areas that are meant to be white have gone gray. The area under them is red, as if he had been rubbing at them for hours.

He takes a hasty step forward, his palms raised. She knows right then that he has not received the proper amount of training to be within the castle. Who let him in? “Princess, I’m alright. Truly, let me serve you!” She takes another step back, feeling rough tapestry brush against her uncovered shoulders. He looks deranged and sick. She wonders if whatever he’s caught is contagious.

“Leave now, before I cal-” He rushes her, his lips curling, saliva foaming at the corners. Elwin grunts, her hand immediately going to her thigh. His hands grip both of her shoulders, pinching the hair trapped beneath his palms. Her scarcely covered back rubs against the tapestry behind her as his nails break her skin.

She shudders as she pulls open the slit in her sleeping gown and unsheathes her dagger. She no longer keeps it at her chest, as it’s been harder for her to get to. He presses against her, the pressure against her stomach making her dizzy with sickness. “Let me go!” She can see it in his eyes, and the longer she looks, the harder it is to ignore. The madness. He’s gone absolutely mad.

Elwin doesn’t have to think twice. She’d never have to think for more than a second if a choice came down to her life or someone else’s. Just as his hands tighten on her shoulders, she throws her arm up and shoves the blade of her knife through the side of his neck.

She doesn’t let up as he stumbles off of her. With her hand firmly wrapped around the small bone handle, Elwin draws it out before sending it flying again, this time angled up the front of his neck. Blood, warm and slippery, spurts, hitting her face and spraying the front of her gown.

The guard slips on the edge of the rectangular rug as he attempts to plug his gushing wounds, but still, she won’t stop. Elwin follows him as he falls, her aching body almost tumbling right over as she pulls her dagger out once again.

The next time she stabs him, she aims for his eye. Then his ears. Then his chest. Then his stomach.

When someone finally notices that her door has been open for far too long, they walk into a gruesome and chilling scene. Elwin sits, her legs crossed underneath her, and her persons soaked with blood.

Before her lays the mutilated body of her new guard. And on her face, is a calm smile.

It wasn’t long until she began to feel the effects of the guard’s madness. Heat came to her first. She was so unbearably hot that she eventually stopped dressing herself. All her gowns stuck to her skin, the sweat slimy like glue. The itch of the fabric did nothing but spark her anger.

Her appetite fled her.

None of the meals that were brought to her were touched. Eventually her guards were ordered to only bring her drinks, as all her untouched plates were beginning to stink up her prison cell. It was when her vision began to fail her that she finally understood what was happening.

Elwin had heard her father speak of that horrid disease only a few times in her life. She never really had to worry about it, as the capital was free of cases, and when they left on their voyages, they were always with the most skilled druids the lands had to offer. It seemed the disease had finally broken through their defenses. Elwin walks as fast as she can towards where her bell should be.

Her hand rubs along the wall until the tips of her fingers finally touch the cool metal. She hasn’t used the bell in so long, it almost feels unfamiliar. She pulls it from its hook and shakes it so vigorously that someone would think she was being attacked.

Her room door opens just as her legs lose their strength. “Princess!” An unfamiliar voice yells for her.

Gloved arms envelope her form. “Tell… Tell his majesty that I am dying.” Her hand grasps onto her guard’s. “I would… prefer to die in my old rooms, with the sun on my face.” She lets go of him, one of her hands drifting down to her swollen belly. While she had no maternal instincts when it came to the thing growing within her, she felt it unfair that it would never get to experience life.

Perhaps this is what they call personal growth.

She herself, does not want to die. Elwin, despite her age, has not even begun to live yet. Her first and only act as her own person led to her imprisonment, and now she will die having never seen the sunlight again. How terrible it feels to have been wronged like this.

Elwin has no idea how long she sits there on the ground, shivering, but just as the last of her vision leaves her in total darkness, she feels a hand on her face. “This… This is not what I wanted. Come with me, Princess. So you can feel the sun on your skin.”

Elwin died three days later. Her heart stopped in the dead of night, the sun nowhere to be seen. Her curtains were pulled open, not that she would have been able to tell. On her bedside table sat jars of every medicinal concoction known to man, every single one of them useless.

Her father laid on the floor at her side, one hand clasped around her own, the other holding a handkerchief to his eyes, which had begun to leak steadily. Even as her body grew cold, the emperor did not let go.

Even as he began to waste away, he did not leave her side.

When Elwin awoke, much to her own surprise, her father was nearing his own death. His body had been reduced to a skeleton; his hair so white that it had almost blinded Elwin.

She had always lacked something fundamental in human beings. There was very little that disturbed her to the point that she acted out. But when she saw her father, gasping for his last breath next to her…

Elwin was so angry.

She was so unbelievably angry that this man, the one that locked her up for eight months, the one that let those scholars prod at her body, the one that forced her to… She was so angry that something else took over her. Heat had flooded her veins, her skin aching to make contact with something.

A voice was telling her that all she had to do was reach forward, and everything would finally be over. She would finally be free. And she was so angry, and so tired, that she gave into it. She placed her hand on his, her nails digging into his paper-thin skin.

The sensation of something wet fluttering against her shoulders snapped her from her reverie. But it was too late. The emperor of Velshlind was dead, his most final moments peaceful.

And it had not been enough for her.

No… it had not been nearly enough.