1st 5 Pages October Workshop- Hoover

Name: Audrianna Hoover

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Title: Princess of Darkness

“You will be presented for selection of the sacrifice tonight.”

She stared up at the king, unblinking. She could feel the anger pooling in her gut, even as the fear of what he had just announced struck a chord in her. Her eyes flicked to the king’s right, to the prince there beside him.

Golden and beautiful and perfect, he was everything she was not. His hair was the color of spun gold, his eyes like a never-ending pool of crystal blue water. His fair skin was tanned from his time outside, from training to be a warrior. That’s where the lean, toned body came from, too. Even now, discussing such a bleak subject, his face showed no glimmers of hesitation or fear for her.

Her own twin did not care that their father was going to march her before a crowd of their own people and sacrifice her, should she be chosen.

Aeron was indeed everything she wasn’t. If her jet-black hair and eyes that were just as dark didn’t prove that, their difference of personalities certainly did. While Aeron obeyed their father without a moment’s hesitation regarding everything, Arielle had suffered a terrible compulsion to rebel against each of his commands.

“Why?” she asked, drawing herself up to full height, eyes connecting with her father’s. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder casually, a movement that hid the anxiety she felt. The iron bracelet around her wrist glinted dully in the light from the fire as she clenched her fists, the deep orange amulet inset into the metal gleaming brightly. “Do you really despise me that much? That you would spill my blood?”

King Jerald gave her a sad shake of his head. “You’ve forgotten which rite this is, Arielle.”

That set her back. Her mind whirred through the calculations.

It had been nearly four months since she’d last been allowed out of her tower, her maid her only company – a hateful old bat that begrudged Arielle the last four years of constantly caring for her. They had an understanding. Arielle would not speak to her and Creda would not slip enough poison in her every meal to keep her bed ridden for the rest of her life. Or kill her.

She spent her days watching the training grounds and the men who trained there from one of the three tiny windows, including her twin. She yearned to be out in the open air again, to be out of the room she was held in.

Only the castle knew of her imprisonment, the king not wanting the entirety of his kingdom to know of his daughter’s evil deed. It was why she was locked in her tower most of the time, made to wear the bracelet, and why Aeron seemed to hate her so much.

She felt the blood drain from her face as her mind caught up. Nearly four months. That would make tonight’s selection…

“The Spring Rite,” she choked out. “You’re going to give me to Haebor.”

“Of course not, my daughter,” her father murmured, fingers caressing the arm of his chair. “I’m merely offering you for his assessment. If he were to choose you, it would be a way for you to redeem yourself.”

“I will not go,” Arielle said, gritting her teeth. “You cannot make me offer myself. It must be done freely.”

The king stood slowly, wearily. The men who had dragged her down the stairs from her room stepped forward to each claim an arm. She kept her head high and proud as her father approached her, Aeron keeping at his heels.

“Good dog,” she snarled at him. Aeron glared back at her.

King Jerald sighed as he came to stop in front of her. “Arielle, you will go,” he said. “I’m only trying to save you, to save your soul. Someone must right the path you’re on. Please don’t throw away this chance to prove that you’re not as you appear.”

Arielle felt the threads of apprehension wind tight in her gut. If she could just prove to him that she wasn’t evil. If she could just prove that she hadn’t meant to defy him that day.

“It is, of course, as you say. You must offer yourself freely.” He looked her over from head to toe, grimacing as if the stain on her sleeve from lunch was the stain on her soul that he so abhorred. The King shuffled back to his throne of glittering gold and black diamonds and rich rubies, but Aeron remained in front of her. “But you must choose now,” he added, reclaiming his seat.

Arielle looked up at her twin, searching for any sort of sympathy or sibling bond. Aeron’s blue eyes were cold on hers, his hand resting on his sword. He would kill her himself if she tried to harm their father.

“How fitting,” Arielle said snidely, “that you would be the one to kill me if he gave the order. Did you give our mother a choice before you murdered her as you were born, little brother?”

Aeron’s hand tightened on his sword and the muscles in his jaw worked, the only indicators that she had hit a nerve. At what, she didn’t know. Either the reminder that his birth had been the cause of their mother’s death or the fact that she was, indeed, older than him by twelve minutes. But he didn’t pull the sword as she thought he might. He would wait for an order from their father always.

“Choose,” King Jerald repeated. His fingers traced over the arms of his gaudy throne once more.

There were worse things than death, and one of them was to be bred like an animal by the god Haebor. The coupling would result in a child, as it did every year. The child would be born, normally tearing its mother to shreds in the process, and be brought up away from the castle. To what end, Arielle had never discovered, though she had snooped often enough.

It was, however gruesome a death, considered to be a great honor if Haebor chose you.

She had no doubts. Haebor would choose her.

She could fight, she knew, and force Aeron’s hand. But Arielle looked at her brother, then down at the handle of his sword, his knuckles white with his grip. The thought of dying right there on the spot terrified her. She raised her eyes back to the king and studied that look on his face, the hope for her redemption. She nodded once, stiffening at the smile of approval she received – a first in a very long time.

She let her father’s men march her from the throne room and through the main hall of the castle, down the steps. Her eyes tracked everything. Guests of the court stopped their boisterous laughing and merriment to gawk at the princess, whispering excitedly as she was loaded into the royal carriage.

Arielle couldn’t hear their words, but didn’t care. She ignored them and their gossip, drinking in the sight of the sinking sun at the horizon. There was maybe an hour before Haebor would make his choice. She could only pray that he would overlook her for another unlucky soul.