Chapter 2
Corrina
The floor was cold against my almost-bare feet as I stumbled into the hall to watch my childhood friend await judgment. The air was cool and damp. I could taste the salt in the brisk morning breeze from over the sea, sour in my mouth. A staple in the Port Taylon diet of fish and seaweed.
Jason was standing behind me his hands on my shoulders, almost supporting me. I was swaying on my feet from shock. Vivien Taylor Scarlett. Who would have thought that I would ever have seen her again? When she had left three years ago, without a word of goodbye to anyone but Scott, we thought that it had been forever. Anyone who knew Vivienne would have known that she was too proud to frequent a place that she had said her farewells to.
All at once, the murmurs died down in the hall, leaving it eerily silent. The only sounds were the screaming of the vengeful wind and the ever present slap of sea against stone. Then another, only just audible caught my attention. A scraping of metal against stone. My elder brother Scott came into the hall slowly, his powerful frame filling the door. Rather than his usual expression of confidence, he looked troubled.
“The…” Scott stopped for one awful second. I could see regret and indecision written on his face. “The prisoner is brought.” He rumbled, then stood aside. He had done it. He had referred to Vivien, the girl he had grown up with and loved as his own sister as “the prisoner”. There was another moment of silence. Then, slowly, the scraping started again and my best friend stumbled into the hall. Jason’s hands tensed on my shoulders.
She entered slowly, not just because of the shackles on her feet but also to satisfy her theatrical tendencies. She was building the tension. She stood in the doorway for a few moments, appearing to be unsteady on her feet. Then she made her slow, painful way into the centre of the room.
She was so thin. That was the first thing that I thought, looking at her. As a little girl she had been enchantingly plump, with dimples like a child’s fingerprint in cream. Her wavy golden hair had descended almost down to her waist. A pretty child, the adults had all agreed. She would be beautiful one day. But now… Her hair had been shorn off; she had a cluster of golden ringlets, curling tightly to her ears, like a little cap. Her ankles were tiny and child-like, and her legs were as slim as a doe’s. Her big green eyes were haunted and under them were smudged dark shadows. But worse than that….She turned her head slightly, and I breathed in sharply. There was a long, jagged scar, running from her temple to her jaw bone. It gleamed, bone white against her skin as she made her way to the large stone chair in the centre if the hall. Her legs were trembling.
Abruptly, a rush of anger flooded my mind. What right did she have to come in here, looking like some sort of tragic heroine? All around me, I could see people’s eyes softening as they watched her shivering in the morning cold. She was always had to be special; there was always some mystery about her.
They had whispered that she was really a countess-no, a princess! The hair to the throne in some far away land and snatched from her bed at seven years old! No, she had been a slave girl that had served in the east until she had killed her master with his own jewelled fruit knife and fled! All we really know is she turned up one rainy morning in Port Taylon and flatly repeated that she didn’t remember anything. She was about seven years old. We pretend we know more, but Vivien is a paradox until she wants to be solved. Even as a child she was the same. People like to whisper. But not about me. Never about me. The miller’s daughter, dependable, moderately intelligent, moderately pretty, the willing standard bearer in our childhood games. Never shocking, spicy, dangerous, scandalous, glittering, dangerous. That was Vivien.
“The trial has begun.” Scott sat down with the face of a man who wished he were dead. I turned my face towards Vivien, as did everyone else in the hall. She looked back at us, eyes blank. Then, slowly, she began to speak.
