His Divine Queen

The Victims

The mood had been sombre for the past few days now. The only sounds that had bounced around the cold walls of the Palace were the hushed whispers of the staff. But even those were silenced quickly, reprimands forcing them to carry on their work and to stop their gossiping.

But it didn’t stop there. Their condescending looks followed Arabella whenever she left her office, closely followed by their accusations and whispers that drilled right into her soul. Darkening her days that had already grown bleak after the death of Eric. After the disappearance of Camila.

The attacks had only become more frequent and violent, the bodies they left afterwards barely recognisable as human. It was heart-breaking and, the longer it went on with no clear sign of stopping, the more Arabella wondered if perhaps the staff were right.

Maybe she was incompetent. Maybe she wasn’t right for the job. Maybe their hopes had been ill-placed; naïve dreams of a despairing city.

She didn’t feel like she could do it all. She still felt like that young girl, from all those months ago, who had been forced to marry a Prince whom she had never met before. How could she lead an entire Kingdom?

Maybe she just wasn’t meant to.

- - -

“Queen Arabella, there was another attack last night.”

Arabella stopped writing, closing her eyes briefly as she felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. She breathed in, holding the warm air in her lungs before she pushed it back out, finally looking at Demetri waiting in her doorframe. “Where?” She questioned, pushing up from her chair to tug a thin coat over herself.

“They were left at the gates of the city this time, Your Highness,” he responded, dutifully following after his Queen as she strode down the corridor.

They were getting closer, Arabella thought, more confident. And yet she still had no idea who they were.

It was a quick trip to the outskirts of the city, the small party of guards following her every move reminding her once again of all the freedoms she had lost. But she could not dwell on that, because if she did she knew that the yearning for what once was would tear her apart.

There was a small crowd gathered around one of the outer walls, yet as Demetri pushed through the onlookers she saw an opening in the centre. There were several Palace guards standing prone in a circle, facing outwards at the onlookers who had begun to grow restless as they noticed their Queen. Behind them, on the sandy ground, were three dark shapes. The closer Arabella got, she noticed that they weren’t just shapes – but rather the reason why she had been called out here, and yet another line to add to her tally of failures. It was the victims, the Weres that had been alive and breathing up until yesterday.

But now they barely looked human.

There was little to them now except the massacred flesh, bones and blood that coated the floor like it was an unfinished canvas. The smell they exuded was putrid, lingering in the air and turning even the strongest of stomachs queasy.

She could not bear to observe the scene in front of her for long. One glance had caused the bile to rise up in her throat, stomach churning sickeningly with every breath that entered her lungs.

Arabella had seen plenty of death before. She had grown accustomed to it, had accepted it into her life like an old friend that could just not be escaped. So, up until that moment, she thought that she had seen the worst of it. But now she realised she had been wrong. This was barbaric, a darkness that Arabella knew would stun even the God of Death himself.

And she had done nothing to stop it. Maybe the staff were right.

She stayed silent for a moment, eyes sweeping over the agitated crowd beyond the wall of guards. “Clean the area as swiftly as possible,” she ordered, “and cover them up, transport them to the Palace for a closer look.”

Demetri jumped into action, barking orders at the surrounding guards as Arabella remained in her place. She heard the movements around her, but her eyes would not move from their place in the sand. The blood had begun to dry, crusting dark red and glimmering in the bright Sun. The guard’s feet displaced the ground around it, concealing the crimson stains as fresh sand slowly began to fall upon it.

And just like that, her mind was elsewhere. Locked into that state of blindness where thoughts ran thousands of miles an hour. Her insecurities, doubts and fears blurring into one weighted sense of fear. This was her fault.

She was so engrossed, she barely registered Demetri at her side until he lightly touched her arm, muttering, “Your Highness?”

She startled, whipping her head up to look at his face. “Excuse me,” she mumbled, “I have to get out of here.”