Chapter 3
1128 Words
What more was life going to throw at her? She thought.
Her face, written all over with worry.
She was worried, and she could not hide it. She did not mind the sneers and laughs she heard at the background as she ran to the Court House.
She had overheard some of the palace maids talking about how the Princess Hazelene had been summoned to the Court House, the first time ever. The first time she'd receive an invitation from the king to step out of her harem.
But it wasn't for a good news.
Apparently, it was for her to receive the scroll of her fate. Her fate of being the bride to the devil's son.
Roxella ran. Yeah she ran. This was the third time she'd run like that in her life.
The first was when she had to run away as she had been instructed by her parents to.
Their house was being raided. The former king her father was the prime minister to had been assassinated and his assassin's came for him too as he was his right hand man.
She vividly remember how her mother had taken her to the backyard secret passage and told her to run. She was just Eight then. What child in her right senses would run when her lineage was being killed. What sort of child would run when she knew she was going to survive alone. What sort of child would run and leave her family behind to their deaths.
She did not run like her mother had instructed her to. Rather she hid at the door, as her mother had locked her behind. She watched on as her father was struck down with multiple strikes from a sword she could not see who wielded it.
Her mother was struck down too, so did her uncle, and her aunties. She watched on as the maids and house servants followed suit.
Everyone fell, blood flowed. Not one living soul was left to live.
She watched on helplessly, confused whether or not to cry or run as the assassins were still on the lookout for any living soul left by.
One almost approached where she was, and as she was about to get up to run, she heard his screams from the door she was hiding behind.
Getting up, she tootles over to see what went wrong with him from the tiny hole she had witnessed her family get murdered in.
An ominous figure had a man grappled in his fingers.
From the look of his back, his size and how he was able to pick him to fit into his fingers, she sensed that he could be the devil.
She had heard about him.
Many have heard about him, stories of him were what reigned among the storytellers. Her friends and agemates worshipped whoever has heard stories about him. This was indeed the devil she was seeing.
He towered ominously over the next man, his immense size and dark silhouette casting a chilling shadow. His back was hunched, adorned with twisted horns protruding from his head. His eyes, burning with fiery intensity, glared down at the helpless figure in his grasp. Every feature exuded a sense of malevolence and power, leaving no doubt that he was indeed the embodiment of darkness itself.
Roxella had watched on.
He has saved her. Whether he was aware of it or not, the devil has saved her from death. And as she watched as he killed all the assassins, she had heaved sighs of relief because her parents killers had been avenged.
Sad that he came late and only after their deaths.
Something he did had caught her attention. He was searching for something. The devil was searching for something among the dead bodies that littered massacred all over the floor.
For each one he reached, he tore it into shreds, thoughtfully searching for whatever it was he passionately looked for.
Roxella who had them sighed reliefs, stepped back.
The devil did not come to avenge her parents, he never did. The devil never knew them and they never knew him and the devil wasn't a good person to avenge deaths of good people.
Her mother's body had been the next she watched shredded to pieces even after she had been massacred by swords and arrows.
When she saw it, she had obeyed her mother's last words and ran.
She ran, as far as her tiny legs could carry her, she did not think about where she'd run to. She did not think about abandoning her parents dead bodies. The mere presence of the devil and his actions had scared her, even up to the point of her not returning to look for the remains of her parents bodies.
The second time she ran like that was when she saved a woman.
The woman had seemed mysterious and carried a sword pierce in her heart.
She was running as if being chased by demons.
She had aided the woman when she saw the devil coming. He was chasing her. Because of what she had seen in the past, she decided to aid the woman to escape such fate that her parents bodies had been subjected into.
She ran with the woman, but unfortunately, she did not make it out alive. She could barely run and she had been injured alot.
Roxella had tried her best to save her but in the end, she gave up the ghost and promised to return to repay her for her kindness.
After she had buried the lady, she had returned to see the streets turned upside down.
The devil had ransacked all searching for the lady to no avail.
Who was she and what did she do for the Devil to bother so much about her she had asked herself.
Her encounters with the devil in the past were not stories worthy of writing about because they were dark enough to send shivers down ones body and soul.
Now her daughter was going to be bounded by matrimony to the same devil she detests and dreads?
Would her daughter make it out alive?
Would she be able to find favor in his eyes or would she, like other brides that were taken to the devil, be gone for, never to be heard or seen again.
This couldn't be happening to her, she thought.
Bad things shouldn't be happening to the helpless.
How was Hazelene going to survive this?
How was she going to navigate through this?
Trembling with fear, she fell to her knees before the king, her voice quivering as she pleaded,
"Your majesty, please take me as the bride to the devil instead of my daughter. Spare her from this fate I beg thee."
- Writer
