Shock
I had only one thing to say to Amarantha, "Go back to the shit-hole you crawled out of!"
I felt mighty in my declaration.
I had been dying to say it all night, and hearing her say she was going to fuck Tamlin and make him her whore was the last straw. I felt overwhelmed with righteousness, because it felt like the right thing to say. It felt right to stand up to a Hybern whore, Hybern's old ass and outdated General, whom had come to Prythian without anything to back her up, nothing but her stupid remarks and stupider Court followers.
"Shit-hole?" She stood, coming near me. "Is that what you think?"
"I didn't stutter."
"You certainly did not, but I had to sure."
"I meant it," I said through gritted teeth.
The feeling didn't leave me as she got close enough for me to smell her too sweet perfume, that bravado of righteousness stuck to me, it didn't leave until she was inches from my face, hidden curved dagger in hand, and it slashed at my unprepared face with devilish intent.
I didn't have time to react.
I was hit.
My face was on fire, and my eyes screwed shut at the viper's attack.
As I tumble to my knees, one eye refuses to open, scrunched in the severe sensation, still safe, and the other, hangs from my socket, a pendulum of tendon and torn cartilage. My face weeps red. It pours down my neck, and stains the ground of the Court's ground, a growing puddle around me.
In my ears, a cruel woman's laughter drowns out a man's horrible scream.
A scream so primal and full of hurt that I know it will be imprinted in my nightmares. The scream becomes too much, especially when I recognize it as my own, and that is when it breaks me. My knees rolling back and forth and my hand flickering from touching and righting my already lost eye, overwhelmingly frustrated in letting it just hang, and too terrible to imagine that I could never use it again, never be whole again.
She did this to me. The Hybern whore stole my eye.
"You got him Amarantha!" Says one of the spectators, so joyous from the deathly chill of the crowd around him.
"Yes she did, at least she can put him in his place!" Eris' voice stabs my display of agony, my own brother, gives me another sledgehammer right in the face. "Serves him right, maybe this time he'll learn."
"See Lucien." She is back on her false throne, Queen Amarantha in all her evil glory. "Even your family agrees this punishment is good for you."
Tamlin will kill you for this.
I want to tell her that.
Make her see how stupid she was for laying a hand on me.
Instead I groan low and weep red tears, raising my one eye to the Dark Queen with a gloating smile.
"Make sure to tell Tamlin that I am waiting for him." She whispered, flirtatious and amused by my sudden silence to her request, "and remind him that I am not a patient female. I will not accept his refusal, because the next thing I will take is your head, is that clear Lucien Vanserra."
Those I once called brothers chuckled darkly with her.
I lifted my eye, daring not another word, least I get myself killed.
I turned my hateful cyclops stare to those moronic brothers of mine, marking the remaining four, remembering that I had a part to play in cutting them down from the horrible six they once were. Jealous, conniving, morons of... sad wet and leaking russet eyes meet mine.
My eye widens as I meet my mother's gaze.
She is in pain, hand clumped around her mouth, and bracing herself in the shadow of a statue.
She is crying.
Her tears are for me.
That is when I really broke down.
