Chapter Ten: The witch who betrayed us

Simone's Pov

When she was younger, her mother would sit her by the fire and tell her the same story she told every night. The story of the great black witch, Marinthia Galma. She was one of the most powerful necromancers to ever exist until she let her pride consume her. Until she started to want more.

Desperate for power and total control, Marinthia led an army of power hungry witches to Randale, the ancestral home of the high king. All the witches were slaughtered before they made it past the castle gates. All eighteen thousand of them were killed because among them hid a traitor. The traitor was a more powerful witch than Marinthia was.

She switched sides at the last moment and led the high king’s army to victory over her own people. Some claimed that she was in love with a vampire. A vampire who dwelt within the high king’s castle walls. But that wasn’t the main lesson Simone’s mother was aiming to teach her.

No. Not at all. Her mother would always end her story with the tale of the one witch who was said to have escaped. A woman who struck a deal with a knight to let her live and all she did was surrender, submit to him.

When all was said and done, she earned her freedom. Simone picked up a few lessons from her story.

Lesson number one: Keep your head down, pride is deadly.

Lesson number two: Never follow the crowd

Lesson number three: Trust no one

Lesson number four: If an ant bites you, it is most likely from the cloth you’re wearing.

Her mother would always end the story with the same mantra she drilled into her head during her nineteen years of life. ‘Do whatever you must to survive’

And that is exactly what Simone did.

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It was almost midnight when Ayesha barged into their room four nights ago or was it three? Time was tricky when she was locked up in a dark cell. It was ironic how Simone manage to enjoy the silence of the dungeon.

Ayesha was covered in blood, a wild fire in her eyes. She was a trapped animal and her hunter already had his noose around her neck. Simone could remember the fear she felt that night. How it wrapped its slithering tail around her neck until she could barely breath as she prayed that the blood on Ayesha’s hands did not belong to the same man who’s hand in marriage they were all competing for.

Her prayers were futile.

Before Ayesha could even begin to explain herself, the king’s guards knocked down their door. They dragged Ayesha and Simone away in separate directions. She never saw Ayesha again but she had a fair idea of what they did to her for murdering their prince.

In Ayesha’s case, death would be mercy.

Simone was beaten, stripped bare and thrown into a cold dungeon. Every few hours, water would drip from her prison walls into a small wooden bowl. By night time, she would have enough to drink.

The guard who came to her everyday to make sure she hadn’t escaped told her what happened.

An ant in Simone’s cloth had bitten not just her but the entirety of the witch race as well.

An ant named Baila.

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Keys clattered to the floor as the guard tried to open her cell. He cursed loudly, picked up the keys and shoved one of them back in the key hole. During this time, Simone remained huddled in a corner, her back raw and bloody from leaning up against the wall for too long.

When he stepped inside her cell with three other guards, she practiced lesson number one.

‘Always keep your head down’

She was limp in their arms as they dragged her up a flight of stairs and along the hallways, naked and bleeding. She coughed, a gnawing pain eating at her stomach. She was going to die. Wasn’t she?

The hallways were unusually quiet. There was not a guard in sight or the usual maids that paced up and down with trays of food and warm napkins. It seemed the castle was empty or maybe everyone was isolated in their grief over the death of their most treasured high prince.

The guards came to a stop but she didn’t bother to look up. All she could see was the floor as she spat out more blood. A door opened before them and she was thrown inside and tossed at someone’s feet.

This person wore leather boots encrusted with rubies.

The man before Simone was the high king of the realm.

The one who’s son Baila had murdered.

She was torn between begging for mercy and waiting for him to speak. The silence grew more and more uncomfortable, choking her. She could tell he was studying her but she did not look up no matter how tempting the urge to do so became.

Lesson number one was still in session.

“You’ve been informed of what your sisters have done?” he questioned. His voice was rough, deep like the ocean. And after a few days of worrying over her fate, she welcomed his voice.

“I have no sisters,” she managed to speak. Her throat ached from the movement. In comparison to his, her voice was low, raspy and sickly.

He chuckled, throwing a huge blanket over her before stepping back. She relaxed, welcoming the warmth of the cotton sheet.

Maybe she wasn’t going to die after all.

If he planned on killing her, he would not have covered her with a blanket and he most certainly would not have had a friendly reaction to her answer.

“You’re aware nonetheless of their reckless behaviour,” he hummed, yanking open the curtains. Light flooded the room. It was so bright, Simone squeezed her eyes shut. Pain reverberated in her eyes and her head.

“I’m aware of the consequences of such actions,” she blinked slowly, allowing her eyes to adjust to the light.

The high king let out a heavy breath as he sat on the bed in front of her. She finally gathered the courage to look up but she avoided eye contact as much as possible. She sat up straight, groaning as a slicing pain shot through her ribs. She wrapped the blanket tightly around herself.

“I’m not one to consult with witches but I am at my wits end now. Try as they did, the healers could not revive my son,”

That was news to Simone. She had been under the impression that the prince died on the spot. Baila was a red witch after all.

“My condolences, Your majesty,” she whispered, bowing her head.

He waved her off. “It is not your condolences I want or your sympathy. It is your help,”

She paused. The high king wanted her help? Was it a trap? A way to make her suffer more before he took her life for what Baila had done.

“You are familiar with the dark arts. Necromancy. No?” he cocked a brow at her.

She swallowed. It burned her throat to do so.

Certainly, the high king of the realm who had relentlessly persecuted witches over the years was not asking her to bring his son back from the dead. He knelt before her, taking her chin gently between his thumb and his index finger. Simone’s blue eyes met with his dark brown eyes and she saw the grief in them, desperation like no other. Dark circles marred the skin beneath the high king’s eyes. His eyes were red rimmed and filled with tears as he stared into hers pleadingly.

“You’ll have whatever you desire and more if you bring my son back to me.”

She remained silent. As tempting as his offer was, she remembered lesson number three.

‘Trust no one,’

Her silence seemed to agitate him more as tears poured down his cheeks. The high king was showing her his vulnerability.

“Bring my son back to life and I’ll call off the bride trials and announce you as the winner. You can marry him. Become high queen consort once he assumes the throne,” he begged, more tears pooled in his eyes.

“Please,”

She wondered what answer she would have given him if she was not in such a compromising situation. There came a moment in everyone’s life where they would have to become the thing they hated the most in order to survive. A monster, a traitor, their mother…..

This was Simone’s moment.

Would she give in? Or would she hold out?

Her mother never taught her how to hold a sword but she taught her seven lessons.

Lesson number five, ‘Do whatever you must to survive’