This is only my second post.
I did my best to check my grammar, but it isn't my fortay! If you can, look for my prologue, to give you an idea of whats going on!
Happy reading!
"Let be, Brenadine, and rest," my father breathed, tucking my protesting body back to into the four-poster bed.
"But father!" I whined, pushing the covers away. "Please, please don't make me sleep! They will come back, they always do!"
"Yes, indeed, my child, and yet you are unharmed still. They are but dreams in your head, and harmless." He said, with no tone of finality. He knew I would argue either way. Even at twelve, I was never one to agree so quickly.
I shook my head so hard, my white curls were set aflutter. "And if they are not?" I cried, looking about to the shadows that plagued me. They were still now, ceasing there tormenting dance, there whispering that no one but myself seemed to hear.
He pursed his lips, though it was hard to tell through the grizzled, greying beard. "What does it say in the Hithrian Text, verse seventeen, line twelve?"
I thought it an ill time to test me, but answered anyway. " ' In his image, Lord Hithrow made all things, love each and be loved.' " I mumbled, pulling the verse from the depths of my crowded brain. "It's a monster, father, I can't love it." I rattled, with a child's simple vigor.
"Perhaps it's an angel." He replied, brushing back a white curl, smiling as my dark eyes widened. "Go to bed, you've a busy day ahead you, and a lady needs her rest."
I watched as the shaft of light fade into the darkness as my father closed the chamber door with an audible click. It was gone now, what ever it was. However I wished it were so, I knew it was no angel.
We woke early that morning, to make ready for the palace. It had always been fathers wont to parade me about the palace, thought it seemed these days I was more often then not left at the doors of the palace nursery. Father had been busy with his company of bounty hunters. It wasn't as if I was eager to stand at my fathers side, for his was a tedious business, but the nursery was no more entertaining.
I was regarded with an open air of apprehension, and a certain childish amusement. Teetering on the edge of there miniscule society, neither noble born or of any standing rank, I played along with their games of propriety, ever uneasy with it. I was a toy to them, and they treated me thusly. For years this had lasted, till finally the rope binding me to such propriety snapped, and I was pushed to my end. It seemed that today would be that day.
It was no surprise that it was Edalyn who pushed me so.
"Your hair is such a shade as I have never seen, Brenadine." Edalyn D'Roux said, coiling a white curl about her fingers.
I cringed beneath her touch, knowing what it was she played at. She was the daughter of the Marquis Elovin D'Roux, and carried a bit of a ego for it. "Is that so?" I replied, yearning to shy away her hand.
"Yes it is so." She bit, tugging my hair. "White is such a strange color for hair, don't you think?"
"I suppose so, Edalyn." I said tentatively, managing to free my hair from her fingers.
"Not like your brown hair."
Edalyn grimaced. "It's not brown, it's chocolate. Papa said so. Your so strange, Brenadine, and you don't even know it."
"Chocolate then." I conceded. "I'm not so strange. I only look different, and it's not as if it is my fault."
Edalyn smiled sweetly, but her eyes were alit with fire. "No. It must be your parents fault. Tell me about them, Brenadine."
"Would that I knew them, I'd hardly tell you." I snapped, turning on my heels to leave. Suddenly, I felt her hands dig into the mesh caul binding my hair, bringing me flat on my back.
From the richly carpeted floor, I stared up at her inverted face, silent with shock. "You can't talk to me like that." She spat. "Learn your place."
It wasn't the first time such an outburst between us has happened, but I had grown old of the tedium. She was right. This wasn't my place.
Scrambling to my feet, I glared at her, spitting a mouthful of blood to the floor. I had bitten my tongue hard, when I had fallen, and the metallic taste left me dizzy. Blood had always spiked a fury in me, though I cannot recall why. "What place is that?" I asked darkly, smoothing the front of my velvet gown.
"Beneath me, of course!" She chuckled, touching her fingers to her mouth.
Something about her laugh left me hot with anger. I choked back the bile rising in my throat, managing to speak instead, some few words of rage. "A lowly place, indeed, to be beneath you, my darling Edalyn."
"Don't you dare speak to me like that!" Edalyn seethed, drawing back her open hand to slap me.
To her surprise, I caught her wrist, with deftness only a bounty hunters daughter might aquire. "Or what, Edalyn?" I asked, digging my long nails into the soft flesh of her arm. Fat droplets of blood formed beneath my finger tips. I watched her wince as they bit further into her skin. "What will you do? Tell your father? Shall he have me hanged for turning insults?"
The fire in her eyes turn to fear and I smiled. "Brenadine!" She gasped, watching thin lines of blood drip from her wrist. "Stop! Your scaring me!"
I laughed, almost madly, drawing her closer to me. "Was not that your intentions, Edalyn? Did you not seek to scare me? To bring me down? Put me in my place, as you put it?" I asked, cocking my head so slightly.
"I'm sorry!" She breathed, struggling
I cast her arm away from me, disgusted, "No your not." I said. "You are afraid."
I left without another word, and no one dare try stop me, not even, to my surprise, the nursemaids. I was too old for the nursery, we all were. The cloistered air of childhood left us touchy. We had reached an age truly between childhood and adolescence. I was twelve years old, four years shy of marriage, and full of budding questions and curiosities. I was not meant for the palace. That, I thought, I had proven today.
~~~
"You drew blood!" Father was outraged. "From the daughter of a marquis! How do you think this will sit with the Court?"
"I see you've learned your place!" I shot, throwing my hands into the air, in a most ungraceful manner. I was angry still, at Edalyn, and now at my father, for being ever understanding.
"That is not the point Brenadine. You must always remain calm. You must be stronger! Be the bigger person." He said, still red faced.
I bit my lip, choking back worse words then I could dare say. "From my position on the floor, I would have been the bigger person? To be stronger I must acknowledge I am beneath her? I'll not be told where I stand in this world. Not by you and not by her. Let them tell you we are beneath them, father, but I will not stand for it. Where is your pride? If we haven't our pride to fight for, we haven't a thing left. Why bother trying to restore glory to the legacy you were born to." I asked bitterly, tossing back an errant curl, my face flush with acrimony.
He stopped dead in his tracks, regarding me with a look I had not seen before. "Your right." He said, causing me to start. "Your right, Brenadine."
