A/N: I own nothing but the plot. Enjoy! Trigger warnings of abuse.
It was the second day that Annabeth had found out that she had transmigrated into a novel. At first, she thought it was all just a crazy dream stemming from overworking until a strange woman had slapped her face. The sharp sting of pain across her cheek told her that everything she was experiencing was real. This was her reality now.
Of course Annabeth wasn't the sort to back down from a fight, landing some well aimed punches on the woman who had slapped her for no reason. The woman did not expect Annabeth to fight back, probably after years of the Kiran princess' submission. Unfortunately, some maids and two knights eventually subdued Annabeth before knocking her unconscious once more.
When Annabeth woke back up, she appeared to be in some sort of moving vehicle. The sound of wooden wheels against the ground led her to think she was in a carriage. It was then a strange bank of memories slowly began flooding into her mind. She was the first princess of Kiran who was also named Annabeth, born from the King of Kiran and a maid he had forced an illicit affair with. Because she was an illegitimate child, she was heavily abused by the Queen who could not take out her anger on the king while everyone else turned a blind eye. Her birth mother had also disappeared after Annabeth's birth, probably because either the Kiran king or queen had gotten rid of her.
Annabeth herself had a stepmother in her modern life who treated her much better than how the original Kiran princess was treated, even if the relationship had been rocky at first. Still, Annabeth loved and adored her blended family.
But the original Annabeth's sister, Princess Alana, did not interact often with her elder illegitimate sister, so the original soul never knew what Alana was truly like. Being a bystander of abuse was still a perpetrator of crime to Annabeth's view. There was no way Princess Alana could not have known that her half-sister was being abused.
Annabeth winced as she went through the memories of the original soul being beaten and locked in damp, moldy, and dark rooms. She could tell from the lack of strength in her body that the original princess had been starved often, with her limbs much lighter and bonier than Annabeth was used to in her original athletic body.
Annabeth was also not alone in the carriage. The woman who had slapped her was sitting on the opposite side. The original Kiran princess' memories indicated that this horrid woman was her "nanny", Dame Lune. To Annabeth, this "nanny" was an oppressive abuser who enjoyed seeing the weak in humiliation and pain.
Dame Lune noticed Annabeth was no longer and asleep and sneered.
"You're finally awake, aren't you? Well, you don't have to look at me like that, unless you want another slap, do you?"
Dame Lune's beady eyes glared hatefully at Annabeth as the matron held up her hand. On the nanny's face were several bruises and scratches that Annabeth had inflicted, although the nanny had tried to cover them with makeup and a veiled hat. Annabeth privately thought the dame's pruny face was already ugly enough that the bruises rather improved her complexion.
"Glare at me like that again, and you'll starve for another day. Perhaps the Eldoris King will like you, all bony and stick-like. They're savages like that." Dame Lune cackled as she reveled in joy at the thought of the other's misery.
Annabeth lowered her eyes, not wanting to deal with the crazy lady for now. Thankfully, her captors had not blindfolded or tied up Annabeth. That was their first mistake. She had looked for an escape but the door seemed guarded with knights outside the carriage.
She had to gather more information in her mind before thinking what her next moves were. Thinking Annabeth was finally submissive with her head lowered, Dame Lune prattled on for a while, insulting the Eldorisian and regaling Annabeth with tales of the tyrant king who punished people by rubbing spices in their wounds and putting lemon juice in the eyes. But Annabeth's brain had shut off to Dame Lune's hateful words.
Oh, the nanny was a "Lune" alright, Annabeth thought. A lune-atic.
But now that the nanny had mentioned it, Annabeth felt her stomach grumble. The Kirans had been feeding the original princess tiny amounts of food since the poor princess was born. She felt a surge of anger on the original character's behalf. The Eldorisians were savages? It looked to her that the Kirans were the ones inhumane.
But there were worse things to be aware of. Annabeth frowned as she recalled the events of the novel. Her death was mentioned in the first chapter and amounted to really just a paragraph. How did the original Kiran princess die again?
But now that Annabeth had somehow seen the original body's memories, she was sure that something was strange about Clarisse's novel. Not everything was what it seemed.
The novel was written in Princess Alana's point of view, where the female lead was seen as pure and angelic. But if this story was seen in another person's point of view, then Annabeth was trapped in a novel full of death flags.
Annabeth felt a drop in her empty and shriveled stomach. Her character had been killed on route to the Eldoris kingdom by random bandits. Because of her death, Kiran had dropped the deal with Eldoris and instead demanded compensation, starting a whole war that encompassed three countries.
Hold on, if her memory was correct, wasn't her death supposed to be right about now?
Suddenly the carriage lurched and an arrow sprouted from the open window of the carriage. Annabeth cursed her unfortunate luck once more. Had the carriage not tilted at the startling of the horses, Annabeth was sure the arrow would have landed straight into her neck. All around her were shouts of knights and the clashing of weapons.
She had to get out before she was killed. Annabeth peered outside the window carefully. Someone dressed in the garb of the Kiran guard's uniform was sneakily approaching with his sword in hand. One might think that this guard was here to protect the princess, but Annabeth's instincts told her that she was in grave danger.
"Hey, where are you going-"
Ignoring her nanny's panicked shouts, Annabeth kicked open the carriage door and jumped out. Thank the gods she wasn't wearing high heels or else her ankles would have snapped in the muddy ground.
Kiran knights were fighting against unknown people in black garb, possibly bandits, but Annabeth wasn't too keen on standing around and finding out. Annabeth spotted a knife from a fallen Kiran knight and grabbed it for self-defense. She ran towards the one horse that hadn't been severely injured and snatched the reins. Unfortunately, a harsh yank on her hair pulled her back.
Annabeth turned around furiously and swung her knife, almost slicing the nanny who was trying to make her stay in place.
"Over here! She's trying to escape!" The nanny shrieked in a shrill voice.
"What the fuck!" Annabeth exploded.
Why was Dame Lune trying to draw attention? Annabeth saw the suspicious Kiran guard coming closer. It was then Annabeth realized her depth of her knowledge of the book was much shallower than she had expected. This story of Clarisse had taken a life of its own, and there were many, many things she could not predict.
It was clear that the eldest Kiran princess was not killed by bandits. This was all a simulated scene planned by Kiran themselves to kill the illegitimate princess to start a war with Eldoris.
This was pure evil, Annabeth thought in horror. Absolute evil.
In her fury, Annabeth swiped her knife at Dame Lune who screamed and let go of Annabeth as the knife nearly caught off her nose. Now there was the suspicious guard to deal with. Annabeth grabbed Dame Lune by the shoulders and shoved her towards the approaching guard. Not bothering to look at the results, Annabeth turned tail and ran. Her body was currently too frail to put up a good fight.
A sword swung at her, and Annabeth ducked hastily, the sword just missing her by inches. She grabbed some gravel and dust at her feet and threw them into the eyes of the bandit who was unprepared for such an ungraceful attack. The few precious seconds were enough for her to swing onto the horse. She had never ridden a horse before but adrenaline was pumping through her veins for her to do something about her escape and to be quick.
"Hi-yah!"
Annabeth desperately kicked the frightened horse to urge it to start forward. Clearly, the people sent to attack her did not expect her to escape in her half-starved and weakened state. Annabeth had seen enough of the original Kiran princess' memories to know that she had been beaten down so often that she was just a mere shadow of herself and would never fight back.
With the information of the Kiran princess given to them, this was supposed to be an easy job. But Annabeth's unexpected flight gave her time to flee quite a distance before the assassins snapped back to attention.
Annabeth didn't know where she was fleeing, but the horse went galloping down the road. Both sides of the road were densely wooded with thick bushes. Then, her heart sank as another group of riders on horses was heading towards her. Annabeth almost halted her horse but looked back quickly to see the bandits chasing her.
"Shit," Annabeth cursed.
Where should she go now? Annabeth observed the riders coming ahead of them. They were dressed in dark clothing. She was sandwiched between two groups of unknown assailants.
"Ahhh!" She couldn't help but scream as one rider aimed an arrow and bow towards her.
Annabeth abruptly snapped the reins and turned the horse to run to the side towards the woods. Perhaps she could escape through there.
Before she could curse more, arrows flew past her. But they weren't aiming for her. The horse riders ahead of her unleashed another volley of arrows that cut down on the bandits.
Distracted by how she wasn't killed yet, Annabeth wasn't paying attention to how she was leading her horse. The horse reared up on its hind legs as it almost plowed into a thicket of prickly bushes.
"Woah! Woah!"
Annabeth flailed to keep her balance and lost her grip on the reins. She could feel herself falling backwards. Annabeth cursed the unfairness of the gods for planting her here. She had just finished paying her student loans!
Suddenly, a strong arm gripped her around the waist and snatched her right from her horse.
"I apologize for offending you, Princess," said the person who had picked her up.
She was plopped unceremoniously in front of the stranger on another horse. Annabeth was about to struggle when she saw the sharp sword in the man's hand. She turned her head around to look at who was grabbing her and froze.
Messy black hair and green eyes set in a cold, handsome face. Somehow she knew who he was. Wasn't that the description of the villain king of Eldoris, Perseus Jackson? And wasn't he supposedly a tyrant king who liked to put lemon juice in his prisoners' eyes? Annabeth felt a prickle of apprehension run down her spine. But one thing was for sure, she was slightly safer with the Eldorisian king than with the Kiran freaks.
The king didn't look at her and swung his sword forward. Annabeth felt an intense aura of energy coming from the king. A burst of water came forth and swamped the bandits and Kiran escort guards off their feet. Yes, there was no doubt that this was King Perseus Jackson, who had inherited the Eldorisian royal powers of hydrokinesis.
With the overwhelming powers from King Perseus and his men, the fighting had quickly settled down. Dark clothed people brought forth the three surviving Kiran guards, several black clothed bandits, and Dame Lune, who had the fortune to somehow live through the attack.
Now that Annabeth had a little time to calm down and analyze the situation, she observed that the men who had captured her assassins were wearing dark blue clothing and not black. The colors of Eldoris.
"Y-you…" The nanny sputtered, her clothing wet and muddy. Clearly, she had not expected Annabeth to live.
"Treat the escorts of their injuries and then send them back to Kiran with the bodies of their fallen. I would kindly ask you to send word back to the Kiran royal family that I have received the Kiran princess." The king addressed the escorts.
The two Kiran guards protested half-heartedly, saying that they were there to escort the princess all the way to the Eldoris castle. But their protests were few and they were both injured. Not to mention, they were already embarrassed at the fact they could not defend against bandits and that the Eldoris soldiers had saved them. Soon they were forcefully ushered away, except for the Kiran guard that had been on the bandits' side. Annabeth wondered how the Eldoris king had known that the guard was part of the assassins.
"As for the bandits…" The king narrowed his eyes. "Bind them up and prepare them for interrogations, including the woman."
"You can't do this to me!" Dame Lune screamed. "I am a citizen of Kiran, with a noble title! Touch me and you will regret this, you hear me!"
Annabeth winched at the old lady's banshee-like shrieks as she flailed on the ground. Perhaps it was a symptom of dehydration and starvation, but a headache was pounding in her head. She wished the king had also gagged the old wailing lady up in addition to binding her.
"Hey, you. Shut the fuck up."
All eyes snapped onto Annabeth who had spat out those decidedly not princess-like words.
A/N: Surprise consecutive second update! Third chapter next Wednesday.
Thanks for all the support everyone! I didn't expect so many sweet messages for this story so soon after dropping the first chapter, but they are definitely encouraging me to keep on writing!
Unfortunately, I can't do a biweekly update :/ I'm sorry, ya'll! I don't have enough chapters stockpiled for the upcoming fall semester to even do one update per week at the moment because I don't think I can write anything once school starts. Taming of a Beast will still update Sundays until end of July, this story every Wednesday, probably in the evening Mountain Daylight Time.
So, see you there on Sunday/Wednesday or be square! We all know the triangle is the superior shape (like Doritos) :D Or circles. I like Funyuns.