PRINCE CURSED
CHAPTER I
- Freedom and revenge -
There are neither weeds nor evil men:
There are only bad cultivators.
- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
The rays of the sun of the Southern Islands lit up her pale face and caressed her skin cold enough to force Hans to cover his eyes with his arm. The wind ruffling his hair, the sea below him howling and the waves beat into deadly cliff, startling him. He managed to open his eyes and forced himself not to look down. With his back against the cold rock, slowly he began to walk in the few centimeters that separated him from the precipice that could swallow him at any moment.
He gritted his teeth and felt his hands behind him as he moved. The wrists still ached thin cuts and deep metal handcuffs for a long time, harpooned his skin clinging to his soul, had taken away freedom.
He walked for a long time without ever looking down. She bit her lip to the tension until it bled; ran through that space in his mind seemed infinite.
Suspended between land and sea, between prison and freedom, between life and death, Hans fought for every centimeter to freedom.
He arrived at the crucial point where the guards were guarding the entrance to the prison, an elevated level compared to his. He could not go wrong.
He was not wrong.
After long minutes of physical and mental torture, he arrived at the roots of an old oak tree, he climbed up and within minutes found himself on the other side of the headland.
He wasted no time to rejoice even a second: he began to run along the sea with all the energy he had left. Ran a long, breathless, until you realized he was on the promontory exactly opposite to that of the prison.
Then finally he stopped. The cursed prince, Hans Westergård of the Southern Islands, stopped.
He watched the prison and found it frightening.
Ten years had passed since a vessel coming from Arendelle Hans had brought to his native kingdom with the charges of high treason and attempted regicide, ten years from that grueling process in which Elsa Queen herself had testified against him, ten years from a death sentence foiled only by the fact that actually no one had died, ten years from the humiliation suffered by his family, ten years from being disinherited and the abduction of his noble title. A hellish and painful period, emotionally and physically, but it was only the preamble of the atrocities that would come later.
He was imprisoned in the prison of the Southern Islands, the Black Castle, as he was known, famous for being the maximum security prison where they were locked up all the worst criminals of the Scandinavian peninsula. Life convict was about as difficult Hans could have imagined. Loneliness, food shortages, dark, perennial uggiosità, moisture that penetrated deep into the bone, mice, disease, filth and squalor, accompanied Hans in the early years of imprisonment. Then, when he was allowed to relate with other prisoners, they began the years of rebellion. Formed a group of prisoners called "Rebels", together they engineered escape plans
from that prison from which no one had ever escaped, along they subverted the internal order of the prison, along harassed the guards were acting together, but all were identified in a leader: Hans.
The same guards realized that he was the focus of the rebellion, intervened before with repressive measures, violence, whippings, beatings, fasts, forced labor, torture, then, when you made against the rebels and their leader would not give up even with the blood of every part of their body, Hans placed in special isolation cell, the Cave. It was a narrow cell and rocky placed in the heart of the earth, well below sea level, the walls of which were completely surrounded by the abyss. Or at least that was what was said, that was what everyone had always believed. But Hans was a prince, Hans knew his kingdom, Hans knew. That cell was below sea level, that cell was exactly at the level of the last tongue of rock that separated the cliffs from the sea, that cell was precisely what for years had always coveted. There was a reason he joined the Rebels, there was a reason he had begun to become their most fervent exponent, there was a reason why they hated the violence: he wanted to be exactly where no one would ever wanted to, in the Cave.
Here, at the dawn of the eighth year in Castle Black, began his brilliant escape plan, breaking and shaping the rock simply with other rock, creating, after two long and exhausting years, a tunnel dug with his own hands threadbare always joined by chains. With the rock created, with destroyed rock, with the rock hiding, with the rock would gain freedom.
At that moment, standing on a promontory, Hans watched the castle while her figure was burning in his eyes. He watched the immensity of the sea front and the majesty of the Black Castle in front of him and he felt small in his human being, great in his being the one who had managed to escape from there. He had done it. It was free.
"But at what price!" he thought as for the first time looked at his reflection in the water.
He was thirty years old and his life ten years ago had changed. The presents dressed as Prince had given way to a dirty shirt and ragged that displayed its compact torso, muscular and tempered by the hard life in prison, the red auburn hair short and combed before they were shoulder-length and matted, his beard first cured and reserved only to the sides of the cheeks was sparse throughout the chin, freckles before mentioned were markedly in contrast with the pale complexion that had lost all its redness, the first bright green eyes were dull and surrounded by gray circles, but within them he was rekindling a spark.
Hans thought back to all that the past had reserved.
A baby came to light under an unlucky star the night of the winter solstice, the thirteenth child, the damn number of the last scion of a centuries-old lineage.
"No!" It was the word that was heard repeating several times during his childhood.
"Do you want to play with me?" - "No!"
"How would you like to go for a walk on the cliff?" - "No!"
"I could go out in the yard as all my other brothers?" - "No!"
But later, Hans regretted all those "No!" When growing up, the words turned into silence.
"Want to come with me to find the Baroness?" - Silence.
"How about me participating in a race with horses as all principles?" - Silence.
"I might get myself a portrait of the royal family in the room as all my other brothers?" - Silence.
And it was this silence, invisible being, that horrible feeling of not existing, that realize that their presence was not affected, which made Hans slowly mature into a deep feeling of resentment, revenge, hatred, revenge.
There was no occasion on which any of his numerous brothers and bullies lacked tease him, to humiliate him, to make him feel useless, to make him understand implicitly that if he was gone, the end no one has complained, perhaps no one He would not even notice. The king of the South Islands, strict, authoritarian father, instead of protecting her youngest child, watched impassively to hissing and often also increased costs by dose.
The only person in her life had shown love, was his mother.
The queen was a magnanimous and virtuous woman, forced by her family to accept a marriage that had never wanted. He loved all his children and reserved for Hans, because he was the youngest, special attention and affectionate behavior that contributed to entrench the hatred of brothers. Because of the importance of its role and to its numerous offspring, however, it could not be fully present in childhood Hans to protect it from malice brothers.
"You'll see, my little one," she whispered always before him to sleep in the evening, when he found the precious time when only devote himself to him, "when you grow up you become beautiful, strong, fearless, you will find a woman who will love you and you will have a life full of joy and happiness. and why not, maybe marry a queen and become a magnificent and just king, I am convinced. mommy loves you, little Hans, never forget that. "
The queen died on a summer night, Hans was nine years old. They told him that death had occurred due to some sudden and fatal disease, but the young prince never believed the official version. When he grew up, he discovered that almost certainly These primarily related causes of poisoning, the unknown murderess. So Hans was completely alone in his excruciating pain of living that plagued sadly already such a young child.
The pain penetrated in every fiber of his body and over time, disappointment turned into bad actions, the paranoia in evil plans, tears in false and malicious smiles.
Year after year, the pain in pain, wickedness in wickedness, Hans developed within him an uncontrollable lust for power and a concise and definite plan: to marry an heir to the throne, and to show the world that he could have been a better ruler than anyone imagined.
"I leave for Arendelle, father. Things will change, I become a hero, and soon you will be proud of me!" Hans announced, excited, on the day of his departure into the realm Elsa. At twenty-three, finally, it seemed to have reached a chance that both were waiting.
"You do not have the courage to be a hero. You do not have the virtues to reach eternal glory, you do not have the means to be powerful, you do not have the personality or charisma to be able to govern a people if you can not even get your point across to your brothers. Hans , you're just one of many principles whose useless name will soon be forgotten. only a foolish woman like your mother could love you ... "
Hans, for the first time in his life, he lost control and began to cry out in the face of his father with a momentum that never before had belonged to him. "Do not you dare insult my mother, you do not know anything about me and her, you do not know how much he loved me, you have never understood that woman was, you've never loved, you are not even worthy to speak his name, not you are worthy to pronounce my name, that of your son, who in this family has always been treated worse than a dog! What have I done to you? What? I'm still your son! "
The king approached him angry and struck her face with a loud slap. "You are not worthy to be my son. Now you disappear from this kingdom and remains wherever you go as long as possible. No one will miss you. Go away."
For Arendelle, then, it had happened to all that he had always wanted and at the same time everything that had always feared. It was one step from being king, was a step away from being a hero, was a step away from the eternal glory, was a step away from the supreme power, was one step of the most absolute happiness. But then it all fell apart as his sword as he hit the frozen arm of Anna who saved the lives of his sister and ordered the Prince to an eternal agony.
At that moment, however, all this was over. He was free, it was wiser, more powerful, more ingenious, more tempered, more evil.
He had a score to settle with the world. He had a score to settle with all those who had humiliated him, beat him, condemned, canceled, deceived, cheated, hurt, reset. He had a score to settle with his family for ruining every stage of his life, from childhood until the day in which he was imprisoned. He had a score to settle with the murderess of his mother that he discovered and found to cost to search the ends of the earth. He had a score to settle with Elsa and Anna Arendelle for testifying against him and stealing ten years of his youth.
He had a score to settle with the guards of the Black Castle that had ruined the existence for ten years. He had a score to settle with himself for not yet proved to all who he really was.
Justice was what we wanted, power was what he craved, eternal glory was what he would get for his life.
A spark was rekindling in the eyes of the cursed prince, now he had become a flaming fire that burned in the name of one word: revenge!