Inkqueen
"The Adderhead is dead!" Those four words were all it took for the citizens of Lombrica and Argenta to erupt into riotous joy.
Violante's subjects.
They called her Her Kindliness, and looked up at her with adoration. No longer would the streets run with blood, or children lie dying in the mines, or corpses swing from gallows. It was said that even the Inkweaver had broken his pledge to banish words from his heart forever, and was to set his pen to parchment once more to sing her praises.
Ah, the Inkweaver. His name was interwoven with pain now; it was he who had conjured those fine songs about the Bluejay that had so ensnared her heart. Violante, the cold, ugly princess, whose heart had never beat for anyone, was felled by that one word.
The Strolling Players were bursting with revelry as she made her way down to the Motley Camp, in her plain dark cloak. She was greeted with a reverence and respect that she had never before earned from the gang of robbers, whose fires she had sat at for years. Perhaps the renegades who would bow to no man, would bend their knee to a woman now.
"My lady," the Black Prince took her hand with a smile in his eyes and pressed his lips against it. Then she was surrounded by well-wishers, women curtsying, men bending in obeisance, and all their face split in beaming smiles. Someone placed a wreath of flowers crookedly on her head.
And then the Bluejay stepped forward into the firelight.
He had a smile that lit up his face to the very smile-lines that crinkled at his eyes. Her breath hitched in her throat, and she was suddenly painfully aware of how she must look to him – a child playing at Queen, her cheeks flushed, flowers tumbling down her hair, and her simple cape worn and nondescript. And then his wife, his wife, the word made Violante want to spit, moved towards her, and curtsied, bowing her pretty blond head. "We are all so happy for you, your Majesty."
At once, Violante's joy curdled to roiling hate that burnt like acid, and blackened her heart with impotent rage. This woman was an ink-blot on the creamy pages of Violante's story. The blemish that could not be scraped off the parchment of her life. The final impediment to her Happy Ending, the stain on her Once Upon a Time.
Tonight, Violante decided, that would end. And back into her heart rushed Violante the Adderhead's daughter, with all his cold steel, his merciless resolve, his ruthless cruelty, his brutality he wielded like a sword to achieve his own ends. Tonight Violante would summon up his dark strength. Even though he was deep in the cold earth of a pauper's grave, and good riddance too, it was his blood that still flowed through her veins.
"You shouldn't make your intentions quite so obvious." The Black Prince was at her shoulder, and his breath tickled her ear. Violante dug her nails into her hand to stop herself from jumping in surprise, and re-assumed her cold, impenetrable mask that she so prided herself on. She turned, unhurriedly, to prove a point – no one ruffles a Queen, least of all a dishevelled self-appointed bandit King - to face him. "Love. It's a little devil. It makes even the inscrutable of us, even you, my lady, like an open book."
"Do not presume to read me, Prince," Violante rebuked him sharply, "Or else you will find yourself on the receiving end of my sharp tongue or even worse, sharper whips, for your insolence." She was harsher than she had intended, but his arrogance irritated her. She narrowed her eyes in what she hoped was a menacing way.
The Black Prince's expression turned stony and hard. "Then I should warn you, my Queen, that the Bluejay is a friend of mine. A very good friend. And his family I have under my protection, and I regard them as my own. And so if anything should happen to them," he paused meaningfully, "You would have yourself an enemy."
Violante balked at his audacity, and felt fury well up inside her once again. "And I warn you, my Prince, that I do not take kindly to threats. Do not forget I am your Sovereign now, and you would have yourself a mighty foe indeed if you dared to cross me." She hissed in retaliation. Then she whirled away from him, her lips pinched and her head held high. She felt a surge of triumph at winning this war of words, and her face softened into a regal smile as the children of the Motley Players clamoured at her admiringly as she swept out of the camp.
Oh, she knew what the Black Prince was insinuating, and he was right. And despite all his bravado, he wouldn't be able to stop her. Violante liked him, very much, she had sat by his fireside with him for years, but if his life had to be sacrificed, then so be it. Tonight the lovely Teresa would have her comeuppance. Tonight Violante would finally secure her happiness. Her father would have scorned her for this, for her soft heart, and her mother's penchant for robbers and vagabonds. But this was her father's lust for blood, his desire to sink cold iron into a beating heart.
Tonight she would kill the Bluejay's wife.