I staggered out of the chambers sometime just before sunrise, Dusk calling after me with praise. Rot and Airitie who were waiting looked up at me with wide terrified eyes as I emerged. My footing was difficult to maintain, my limbs feeling far too weak to support my weight. Nothing seemed real in that moment, my senses muted, and my awareness of the world around me faltering as though at any second it, or I would dissipate into nothingness. I willed it to happen, my own nonexistence, yet my fevered prayers for such went unanswered.
Working forward, pain ranging throughout my flesh everything felt aflame, dark bruises surfacing randomly across my frame as I cradled a wrist I was fairly certain had been broken. My face tear stained and swollen from a bite received in the king's ecstasy, I felt ill. Vemons and poisons being two very different things the poison of his lips had started taking its toll on me. My knees buckled when I reached my friends, seeing me at last to the ground. Rot whose jaw was firmly set caught me, if only just, Airitie bundling me away in a blanket, covering my nakedness that I had yet to realize. The pair whispered mournfully to one a other, but I hadn't the clarity of mind to listen. Rot, who couldn't seem to look at me directly then carried me away from the throne room.
I was in shock, quiet and still the entire time we ascended. My body terribly sore and tender, I was grateful to be carried, flown up to my nook of a home. A wing had been bent in Dusk's excitement and there was a terrible fiery burn between my legs where the blood was drying and I knew I could have never made it alone. I was only vaguely aware of arriving when I was gingerly laid on the bed. Airitie who looked frettful, far from her typically composed and self-assured personality got me a glass of water which she helped me drink, Rot pacing angrily near the door. I wouldn't realize it until later, but his face bore bruises from a brawl with the guards, and they were just as fresh and deep as my own.
After this Airitie came to tend me, gently reaching out she tugged at the blanket.
"No!" I found myself screaming rolling away from her and curling in on myself, despite the discomfort the motion brought. I felt in one terror fuelled instant that a thousand hands had descended upon me with intent to do harm. I fought and railed against the feigned attackers, screaming until my lungs burned.
It was irrational, I thought, even as I was doing it, to be so afraid of having the blanket removed, or of nudity, or being touched. Yet inexplicably I was, in some profound way that I could not understand having this shroud about me the thinly protective veil it was meant more now than life.
"It hurts." I sobbed suddenly, I hadn't meant to show such weakness, I hadn't meant to disgraced myself anymore than had already happened or cause them any pain, but I did. Airitie, crying now with me fell to her knees beside the bed lamenting and apologizing profusely, while Rot watched briefly before stalking angrily out of the squat, one room house.
After a while I was aware of tearful singing, and someone smoothing my hair. Coming back to myself I found my head resting neatly in my friend's lap, as she sang lilting lullabies from long ago. Freeing a hand, I searched with it blindly like an antenna until I'd located my own bedding, with help pulling it tightly around me, in addition the quilt I was already bound in.
I couldn't have been sure, but I felt hours had passed since returning home, light polluting the darkness in thin streams offered by a crack in the wood above me, or a waver of my curtains. It had taken some convincing, but at last Airitie had gone home to get the rest she insisted she didn't need. I should have been asleep too, I's thought disjointedly, but I couldn't staring blankly at the wall instead.
Then it happened, the first crushing waves of tears exploding forth, my body wracked with sorrow and pain. I cried and wailed, loud and long not caring who could hear me beyond my walls or what humor I'm sure they found in my situation, because my reaction made little sense. The others, even those chosen for just a night or two had all behaved as though laying with Dusk was the greatest honor one could have bestowed upon them, speaking in lascivious mannerisms about it. It was supposed to be something wonderful and maddeningly erotic. So why was I so remorseful, hurt and scared?
I didn't know the answers and seeking them caused a hot lancing sensation to radiate through my soul. But perhaps, I reasoned, biting down on my pillow in an attempt to gain some semblance of self control, it because he had been so terribly rough, or perhaps because I hadn't wanted it like the others, or because I fought him. A grim clarity coming to mind I knew the answer just like I knew why none of the others had been so injured, disgraced or violated. It was exactly as King Dusk had said, it felt this way because is had been a punishment.
Even now, knowing the cause and determined never to incur such brutality again I felt that I would be glad if no one ever touched me in the ways he did, not for all my life.
I hadn't been aware that I'd slipped the bonds of wakefulness plunging into a void dreamless sleep until I was awoken by a bright piercing light flooding in through the moss curtain that made up my door. The Hollow was filled with life already, frightened voices crying out to one another as the wood could be heard chipping and splintering away with bone jarring cracks emetted from our log.
"Get dressed!" Rot commanded brashly as he rushed inside, blinding me momentarily upon entery. He barreled across the room when I failed to rise, beaten to the bone, and sluggish minded I failed to comprehend what was happening. Rummaging through my drawers Rot hurled clothing over his shoulder and onto the bed.
"What's happening?" I asked blearily, managing to sit. A cold fear shocked through me blazing up my spine when he grabbed the blankets and began yanking them away with urgency. I kicked at him, shouted in disbelief that he was not to touch me.
Suddenly his hands were on my shoulders, shaking me, "We don't have time for this!" he said sharply, expression haggard and spent, jaw badly distended. Shaking I nodded my understanding and allowed myself to be unwound from my covers. He stopped, staring and my bruised and bloody body for the space of a heart beat before turning away. Flooded with embarrassed even as he seethed with rage I ruefully accepted his help dressing.
"We have to leave." he announced, shielding his eyes and peering out of the doorway. Grabbing my hand he pulled me after him, the sun was bright, it's fiery glare of blistering and burning our eyes with its vision damaging rays. It was as we neared the opening at the log's base that an earth shattering crash filled the air and our Hollow was broken into two. A badger, it's black an white striped face sneering through the fissure it had created, obscuring some of the sun's glare had been the culprit. Only faintly, could I make out the Fairy with long braided brown hair who landed dantily on it's back whispering words of encouragement.
"What's going on?" I asked Rot clinging to him and relying on his strength to hold be aloft.
It was then that in all her resplendent, golden luminescence that Queen Clarion descended into our shattered home flanked by armed Sparrow Men on either side, looking fierce and vengeful with the sun behind them and bows drawn. My heart sank as I heard her in a clear concise voice call Dusk forward, hovering neatly in the air, as my people scrambled to find protection from the sun. It does not hurt us exactly, but our eyes are so delicate and keenly attuned to night it made fire in them causing them to burn and water, and a dull roar invade our brains. Day was too bright for our kind.
Rot held onto me in a protective manner as our king, eyes narrowed approached. "You do like to make an entrance!" he said smiling a shark's smile. "What may I do for you, your majesty?" he went on bowing deeply.
The golden Fairy, an embodiment of the spring time sun, her eyes red rimmed and swollen as though from crying looked down on him spitefully. "You know why I have come." she said sharply, clearly she was not in the mood for formalities.
Dusk grinned devilishly, "You've finally accepted my offer of a bedding!" he exclaimed clapping his hands together in jubilation. "Come, come, my chambers are this way, lets get you out of the dress." he said showing no respect or concern for the Fairy queen or her status. The Sparrow Men drew back their bowstrings as if making ready to fire in response to the insult.
"One or more of your Nyxies have assaulted Lord Milori and slain his owl." she declared in a loud angry voice that filled the log. My heart gave a nervous flutter, both fearful of the queen's intent but thrilling at the fact that Queen Clarion spoke of Lord Milori as though he were still alive. Awash with muddied, mixed emotions and eyes ablaze I buried my head into Rot's chest fearful, hopeful, and fanned all at once my heart was a raging torrent.
There was a silence so great it was deafening then, as all waited for our king's reply. Clarion had chosen her position well, the sun behind her, none of us could bare to look at her for more than a few minutes at a time, even Dusk's head was bent from time to time as though with fervor. "And what is it you desire of this Nyxie?" his voice called at last. "As there was only one."
"Punishment," she declared. "Retribution," the Fairy's voice was hard. "A trail to be held in Fairy court." Murmurs and whispering broke like a wave upon shore until it spread and roiled about the log like a living thing.
"I have seen to her punishment personally." Dusk said coolly, and my heart hammered nausea overtaking me. He had said that if there were any questions as to my where abouts he would say I had been abed with him, now he was betraying that trust utterly.
"We demand justice." the Fairy queen said evenly.
It was then that Airitie managed to make her way to us and embraced me tightly. "Everything will be alright." she promised pulling back to stroke my face, though the waver in her voice spoke volumes of her doubt.
"Nightshade." My name fell easily from the king's lips as he beckoned me forth. Trembling, and wing still injured from the night before I was able to, with the help of my friends fly to be presented before the enemy queen. "This is the poison Gifted Nyxie in question." Dusk said with a flourish of his hand and a smirk on his lips. "As you can see I have dealt with her accordingly." he went on motioning to my bruises and abrasions.
Queen Clarion looked me then my companions over, a mixture of emotion washing over visage, intense hate, disgust, and even a small amount of pity as I tried vainly to adjust my hemlock leaf skirt to cover more than it did. The queen was silent as she stared at me. I once more found myself at a loss before the feet of a mighty ruler my life in the balance, and again dared not speak.
"She will return with us for trial." Clarion said, a statement, not a request. Dusk inclined his head in a curt nod of acknowledgment before turning his back to the queen, making for his still dark chambers once more.
"You can't do that!" Airitie shouted as two Sparrow Men came to flank my sides, Rot gripping me tightly and pulling me close.
Clarion gave my friends a hard look, motioning her men onward. "I will send representatives to fetch any who will speak in Nightshade's defense at the time of trial." was all she would say on the matter.
"Wait!" Airitie cried out against the queen for the second time, as from bow point I was pried from Rot's protective embrace.
The red haired Nyxie tore a strip of cloth from the front of her blouse and wrapped it about my eyes to shield them from the sun. "Everything is going to be alright." she said more firmly than before as she hugged me, mindful to do it as carefully as she could. My hands were bound in front of me then, the fingers that tied the restraints flinching when I whimpered pitifully, my discolored wrist throbbing. Then, with a Sparrow Man grabbing each upper arm they took flight hauling me up between them, as we left my fiends, home, and the world I knew behind, shattered and broken like our log, our Hollow.