A/N:
Ach took me so long to do this. I'd written the first prologue for this before (which took me a day) and it was so beautiful and perfect and amazing.
(You can sense the 'but' on its way).
But then I accidentally deleted it all.
By accidentally closing the friggin page.
WHY DOESN'T THIS SITE HAVE AN AUTO-SAVE MODE? IT WOULD MAKE MY LIFE SO MUCH EASIER. I NOW VOW TO NEVER LEAVE THIS SITE WHILE WRITING BEFORE SAVING IT ALL.
Anyways, I had to rewrite nearly the ENTIRE THING and stayed up till midnight doing it, so I really really really hope you guys like it.
~PROLOGUE~
IT HAD BEEN so long since the Lost Queen had last seen light.
She could feel the burn of the iron mask that incarcerated her face, the way it scorched the curve of her cheekbone when her skin kissed the metal at every breath she attempted. Her eyes were crusted shut by old tears and untouched by the iron, held in empty half-spheres carved into the mask. The short, warm breaths went in and out through the slits for her nostrils and the one for the parting of her lips. She could hear nothing past the constant ringing in her ears. She could see nothing. She could feel nothing. Nothing but pain. Even her rage and gnawing hunger had worn away, leaving a wretched, mad, disgusting thing that cowered inside of her.
Whether it had been days, weeks or months, she was not sure. There was no sun that rose or set inside of her coffin. Her throat clenched, a choked laugh held back. A coffin. Her deathbed. Her sepulcher. The irony of it all.
Every now and then, the Lost Queen's world would tilt, yet the chains she was bound in forced her to stay standing. She stopped caring about why the box moved. Three chains were wrapped around her, each of their ends bolted down on to the walls. Her arms were strung up with the chains twisting tight around them, preventing any movement at all. Six chain links were clasped together with a thick lock that hung just beneath her breasts. Before, she had imagined the walls tightening in on her, squeezing her until her lungs burst. Before, she had craved for the smallest sliver of light to creep its way past the cracks in the box, past the keyhole, but it no longer mattered. She couldn't bring herself to care anymore.
Somewhere outside, the faint echo of metal on metal clanged on the walls surrounding her, sending a chilling vibration down from the chains to her spine. Her eye twitched slightly in the mask. There was more clattering until the sounds ceased due to a loud screeching creak of rusted metal rubbing against rusted metal. A cool breeze blasted in, her nostrils flaring to allow in as much of the air as possible. Heavy footsteps made their way to her, slow and firm. Long, fleshy things grabbed her chin roughly, with a calloused touch that made her throat fill with bile and her stomach squirm—the touch of fingers, she realized. Had it been so long since she'd last been embraced?
The iron mask was torn off her face, and the Lost Queen felt as though her skin had been peeled off with it. Something bright glowed behind her eyelids, scorching her vision. They fluttered open briefly, then squinted shut again. Her chapped lips parted, and the skin on them ripped off, exposing the tender cuts beneath that swelled with blood. The Fae male stalked over to where the chains were bolted to the walls and unfastened the locks, closing them around her wrists instead. He stepped away, taking all the support she'd had with him. She instantly fell to the ground, her face smashing into the iron floor and let out a cry of shock—though it came out more like a croak. Her parched throat throbbed with pain. The ringing in her ears faded away.
"Get up," she heard a cruel, female voice spit. The name came to her thickly: Maeve. "Pathetic. Get up, now!"
For a second, something flared inside of her, something raging and powerful. But the second passed and it was gone.
The Lost Queen mustered all that was left of her energy and will from deep inside—where she kept memories of kisses on a beach hidden with her prince, memories of smirks with a king, of sarcastic remarks from her wolfish cousin, of crude jokes with the shapeshifter—and pushed against the ground. Her arms shook with the effort, then fell, weak. A hand grasped a fistful of her hair and wrenched her to her feet. She gasped silently, stumbling back to lean on the Fae male's body. He had brown hair and blue eyes that were glazed over with some sort of sadistic barbarism that separated his soul from a human's. His name came slower than the Fae Queen's, like treacle dripping. Cairn. She inched away from him, but he held her gaze, grinning.
She recoiled, turning her face away from him. Just outside the box stood Maeve, her skin paler than the moon, her hair and eyes and shadows that sharpened the planes of her face darker than the night sky. A few feet behind her, his eyes a storm of fury, stood a second Fae male, with eyes the color of onyx and curly golden hair and bronze skin. He was silent, but watching her.
The memories came flooding back so suddenly that the Lost Queen missed her footing once again, falling on the wall.
Oh, gods. Wendlyn. The battle. Elide. Elena. The truth. The Wyrdgate. The Valg. The keys. Oh, gods, the keys—
Safe. With Manon.
For now.
"I'm going to give you two choices since dear Fenrys here has insisted on it," Maeve sneered, not daring to get anywhere close to the box. "You could either spend the next few weeks in here, living in your own piss, sweat, blood, and tears. Or you could come with me, abiding my every demand with your mouth shut."
No, the Lost Queen wanted to snarl. Not in a million years. She wanted to spit that mouthful of blood she had in the face of Maeve, she wanted to tear her apart. She wanted to find that motivating anger she'd had before.
But there was something worming its way into her mind.
Something that was digging into her consciousness, into the place where she made her choices, into her soul, whispering its...its... No, this was not another presence. It was her own mind. It was herself who was thinking.
There was a fire dancing behind Fenrys. So bright, so beautiful, something she'd lusted and craved for so long. There were people here. Other souls, other beings. Food, water, fresh clothes, everything. And all she needed to do was nod.
So simple, it seemed. So simple.
Yet something bit at her, some quiet voice that was speaking its thoughts.
No there isn't, smothered the second one, sly and soothing. Think of how easy it would all be. Imagine staying another day in this coffin. The next minute in here could be your death.
So simple. So easy.
Shifting each foot in front of the other, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, Heir of Fire, Light-Bringer, held her head low and walked as the enemy's slave, as lost as ever..