The rain beat down gently on the two windows across from her bed. The sound oddly comforting yet Eviena couldn't sleep. She hated the dark, and the things that might lurk within it. Of course her parents found her fear absurd, but she couldn't help but be leery of the things that might be present in the dark. Her family always considered her the fragile one, scared of her own shadow and everything else that the world had to offer, and in large part this was true. But descending from a long line of witches and wizards mattered little to her. She was her mother's little china doll as her father so aptly put it breakable yet so pretty that it was excused by her family because it meant she would secure a very well off pure blood husband.
These were the thoughts that ran through Eviena's head at night while she tried to sleep, tried not to be afraid. But as of late even her parents began to grow leery of the dark and this did little for her sensitive being.
Two loud bangs coming from downstairs pulled her from her thoughts, causing her to pull her blanket as tightly around her as she could manage. Her breathing quickened and her heart began to race.
"Eviena. Eviena, get up." Her mother whispered urgently while pulling her small child from her cocoon.
"What's happening?" Eviena shouted as the sound of men screaming at one another and hexes crashing into cabinets reached her ears.
"Don't worry about it okay." Her mother bent down and smoothed her black waves down, wiping a few tears away.
"You are going to your aunts for a bit, we need you to be brave, okay?" her mother kissed her forehead and attempted to push her into the large empty cabinet that sat across from her bed.
"No!" Eviena shrieked, fighting against her mother. "There are monsters and spiders. Mummy please don't make me."
"I'm sorry my love. Silencio." She whispered quieting the child but only making her more hysterical.
Eviena couldn't fight her mother anymore and was soon pushed onto her bottom and into the cabinet. She felt the magical pressure surrounding her, attempting to pull her away, but she refused it.
She heard her door shattering and her mom scream, but something heavy was placed against door and she couldn't move it.
"Thought you would escape me, did you?" The deep voice of a man said in triumph, followed by a shallow scream from her mother and the sound of something heavy hitting the ground.
"Please!" Her mother begged. "We don't know where it is, we swear."
"Lying whore." A man spat. He stomped hard on something, bones breaking beneath his foot.
"Oren!" My mother shrieked. Eviena gently pushed on the door to the cabinet to find the weight had been removed.
Three men stood cloaked, standing over her unconscious father and sobbing mother. The moonlight hit her so perfectly Eviena would have sworn that it was a dream and that her mother was sparkling in the light but she was and her fascination was only overshadowed by her horror over the pool of blood spreading from her father's body.
"If you tell us where it is we will be merciful and issue you a quick death." The larger man bellowed, amusement in his voice.
"Tell me, when you told your husband you had fairy blood running through your veins, did you tell him of the object you kept?" The man in the middle came forward, his voice was aged and his magic made it hard for Eviena to breathe.
"You know where they reside, you know what magic they keep. And I want it!"
Eviena felt the hair on her neck stick up. She didn't understand anything that was happening.
Her mother's back straightened. "I turned my back on them and have no memory of what you speak." She said in a slightly trembling voice.
"Fine." He hissed, a mad red glare in his eye. "Then you and your family serve no use to me. Aveda Kedavra!" He roared in anger, the green light striking her mother.
Before Eviena could think she threw herself from the cabinet and over her mother's lifeless body. With the silencing spell still on her, her screams went unheard.
"Well, well look what we have here. A little Halfling." His voice sent shivers down her spine as he grabbed her face roughly and forced it towards him. "So pretty you are. Maybe I will take you as a souvenir."
She began to kick as hard as she could her silent screams doing only serving to fuel his amusement.
"I have no desire to defile little girls." He said, forcing her roughly to the ground. "But I have no problem leaving them to die."
Eviena watched that nasty red glare appear in his eyes again and braced herself for the killing curse.
He gave a flick of his wrist and her entire body went numb. She slumped to the floor, her body making a tiny splash within the pool of blood.
"Who said I am not a merciful dark lord." He gave a nasty smile and swept from the room the two other men following suit.
Eviena lay face to face with her no longer shimmering mother, her father's blood nearly choking her. She couldn't panic or scream. She couldn't run and cower, only lay there and hope to drown or suffocate.
She closed her eyes tightly but didn't sleep. Two moons had past and she still hadn't slept. The smell of her parents made her gag and the pool of blood hardened around her, crawling into every pore of her being.
She had resolved that she would die in her fluffy pink room, filled with unicorns and ponies. Their haunting smiles burned into her memory. She wished death would come swiftly that the darkness that she had feared for so long would consume her, devour the last bits of life that clung to against her will.
On the third day someone came for her. The lone survivor of a massacre they printed in all the newspapers the following morning after her rescue. They printed pictures of a lethargic little girl and said how brave she was. Eviena wondered if any of them saw how truly broken and dead she felt on the inside. But then she remembered that, that didn't matter as long as she stayed pretty. And for the years that followed that's what she stayed. Pretty and silent, never to tell anyone of the events that led her to so lifeless on the inside. Until him.
