A Beast of a Beauty
this is a Christmas present for my best friend, astrangecompassionforsnails, over at Tumblr
Notes: My first, and likely only, journey into this fandom. Enjoy!
Ravenna is eight the first time a man lays his eyes on her in such a manner that she feels her blood run cold beneath her skin. Her mother has warned her early about the dangers of traveling alone as a girl, but it has never hit home as it does now. She is told that she is a beautiful girl.
At eight years old, beauty means about as much as mud.
Ravenna is thirteen when she learns that her beauty has the power to destroy. The old king comes. His soldiers burn the village, string the men up in the streets, and do far worse to the women so that they may only wish for death. Her mother speaks lowly, frantically with the deranged words that Ravenna has become accustomed to her entire life. She slices Ravenna's finger and the girl can only watch as her bright life-force drip, drip, drips, thrice, and breaks the stillness of the goblet of still-warm milk. She is hard-pressed not to sob as her mother chants, "By fairest blood it is done, and only by fairest blood can it be undone. Avenge us, Ravenna. Use your gift."
Finn watches, cringes, as Ravenna gulps down the liquid seconds before the soldiers break down the door. The man in the forefront raises his axe, prepared to spill the blood of all three, but Ravenna stares him down, eyes glittering with hatred. Anger boils in her small frame and she uses its energy to bring herself to full height, eyes challenging the brutish beast before her.
"Take her and the boy. Kill the old hag." Finn cries out for his mother, still too young to bury his fear where others cannot see. Ravenna forces herself not to look back as the soldiers drag her roughly from the only home she's ever knew, Finn hysterical at her side.
A part of Ravenna knows that she is only alive because as much as she is angry, she is also a beautiful, fearsome creature to behold.
The old king is an obese man of sixty-four with thin lips that always seem to gather spittle in the corners. He leers and jokes obscenely whenever Ravenna is in his presence; a habit that serves to only make her disgusted and more resentful than scared. He speaks of making her his queen when she comes of age. Queendom is not something that interests her at the present; the very thought of it sends her in a blind rage. The old king rants and whips her backside with a thin sapling when he discovers that she has smashed all the gifts he's had his servants bring her. He will not personally dole out affection, but will punishment whenever it's due.
Queendom is now something that Ravenna longs for. She patiently waits for her first menses with a dark foreboding. She knows her chance to smother the old king in his sleep with his rich bedclothes will only come when he takes her as his wife, and later lies with her in their marriage bed. The thought of lying with the king turns her stomach, but it would be a sacrifice she would have to make.
Yes, Ravenna will become Queen. She, alone, will turn this wretched kingdom into something to behold. She will right all the wrongs the old king has trespassed over the decades.
She is fourteen when he shows her off to his court, paraded around in gold silk dresses. The material is heavy, cumbersome, and she tramples on the ends far too easily, much to the dismay of her governesses. The old king insists that she remain by his side over the course of the night; she knows she makes him look younger and more handsome to his subjects. For the first time, Ravenna is majorly aware of her own beauty.
The women of the court preen and awe over her, barely containing themselves when she allows them to run their fingers through her long, corn silk-colored hair. They remark on her slender jaw and delicate hands. Ravenna revels in their attention and how they do anything she asks. She convinces a couple of the duchesses to pass their goblets of wine over to her just to see if they would do it.
The night draws to an end and Ravenna prances happily up to her bedchambers just as the sun begins cresting over their hillside. She has won her future subjects over; they were smitten with her very presence. She falls into slumber and dreams of how utterly divine the backs of their necks will look as they bow before her.
She is startled awake some hours later in the mid-morning of the day by the heavy feeling low in her abdomen. Ravenna peers groggily beneath her bedlinens and discovers the source. Warm, clotted blood sticks to the inside of her thighs and the sheet beneath her. Before, she awaited this day with something akin to dread because it only meant a marriage to the grotesque king. Now she is only eager to get it over with as it is only a stepping stone to her end goal. She will be her old king's beautiful, child bride. Then, she will kill him.
The king waits till the last warm days of the summer before he arranges for the wedding. Her governesses dress her in rich purple and gold and politely weep when Ravenna is not looking. They braid her hair up in intricate patterns and spin her around before the tall mirror in her dressing room.
She is radiant.
The court is stunned silent as she approaches the altar; she allows their ignorant adoration to flow through her. The king mumbles his way through his vows as if he has begrudgingly agreed to sharing half his kingdom with a small, peasant girl. There is a feast afterwards, and Ravenna is circulated amongst the ladies of the court who whisper in her ear old wives' tales of what her first night in her marriage bed will entail.
She pays no attention to it at all.
Later, as her old king's fleshy palms slide up the soft expanse of her young stomach, his breath still stinking from the cod from supper, Ravenna outlines a plan in her head on how exactly she will inherit the throne. He had laid his effects on the nightstand, and it would be so easy to grab his silver dagger and thrust it up underneath his rib cage, but it is too soon and there are quieter ways to deal with this.
He professes that she is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen as he moves on top of her. Ravenna closes her eyes and is eight years old all over again.
Three years pass and the old king becomes disenchanted with the fact that Ravenna will ever produce a heir for him. Her womb lies barren, robbed by her mother's powerful spell. She is secretly glad of this, more so when her king refuses to see her less and less. It is on a cold winter day that a young woman of sixteen is brought into the castle and Ravenna bristles with anger as soon as she lays eyes on her. The girl's hair is the color of a robin's breast with dazzling green eyes set deep; she is absolutely stunning and at once it is clear why the old king has brought her here. He means to divorce her, a custom that has become more common amongst kings, and take the new girl as his wife in the hopes of birthing an heir.
Ravenna raves, stark mad, around her room. He means to take her kingdom and her court from her! She was the one meant to rule! She breaks her ivory brushes and mirrors, smashing them against the stone walls. What good is being beautiful if you're still viewed as useless?
She attends the feast that night as the king shows off the girl as his charge, Cecilia is her name, and the court takes to her like fish to water. Her subjects still treat her with the same respect and reverence, but Ravenna finds herself quietly competing with Cecilia for the court's attention. The girl is not dumb, however, and more than once fixes Ravenna with a smoldering glare from behind the length of her red locks.
The seasons change, and in the sweltering dog-days of summer Ravenna discovers that she has an affinity for her mother's black magic. She throws herself into spell books and the craft where it once used to frighten her silly as a child. Her servants remain mum about her newfound hobby; the majority of her handmaidens and governesses are just as bitter with the king, if not more so, than herself.
A week later, Ravenna sees Cecilia in the courtyard late one night on her way back to her room. The girl is dressed in a simple white shift; the ties in the back are undone and hang about her shoulders. Ravenna fills with rage. The bastard! He would spoil such a girl before her wedding night! Red dots behind her eyes, and she finds herself crashing into Cecilia.
The young girl lets out a squeak of surprise, but Ravenna is upon her before she can yell properly. She wraps a hand tight around her throat in the shadows of the courtyard. A spell comes into her head at that moment, a dark, dangerous one that she once thought would be impossible for her. The words flow like honey from the tip of her tongue, and Ravenna is suddenly filled with a hot light. Before her, Cecilia chokes and gasps, young supple skin slowly being drained away into a pasty hue.
The girl drops like a sack of potatoes, eyes glazed with a death fog. (It isn't until years later that Ravenna is bitter enough to leave them alive.) Power sparks like electricity through her body, filling her with the most unimaginable power she's ever felt before. As quiet as a ghost, she slips up to the old king's bedchambers. He slumbers over his covers, still covered in sweat and bodily fluids from his romp with Cecilia minutes ago. No emotion finds Ravenna as she does the deed; the knife slips almost too easily through the thick tendon in his fat neck.
She flees the castle without being discovered. Her own beauty had always been her greatest vulnerability in life; it was time to fashion that into a weapon worth wielding. She could rule and ruin, and become the vengeful sword her mother had wanted. She could be more!
Finding kings with a penchant for beautiful women and a lack of an heir is more common than she could have hoped. Ravenna spends the next sixty years eternal and beautiful, ruling her kingdoms with an iron fist after her king mysteriously croaks in his sleep. Pretty, peasant women are never mourned more than a week at a time. She reduces each kingdom to ashes and destitute, and slips away as quietly and quickly as she had arrived.
It is on another winter day that she finds herself holed up in the back of a carriage with the sound of her glass soldiers shattering around her preceding the arrival of her next and newest victim. The carriage door is jerked open and Ravenna puts on her best "captive" face. The breath leaves her lung violently, and she sits up with a start. The king before her is handsome with dark, curly hair and kind eyes. He introduces himself as King Magnus.
It is almost a shame that he will die before the week is through.