Oh shoot, what have I not been writing?
Ok:
Constance Penrose:
And she was beginning to love them as much as she resented them. That was a recipe for becoming Letitia’s shadow, in truth. She was a tangled ball of conflicting desires and strangled justice. It was never a pleasant place in her own mind.
Constance wished she could stifle the burning rage in her, like Mother did.
So, this ONC has an angry Lord’s granddaughter angry over an injustice done to her, that she has to swallow to keep status, and it’s going to force her to choose to be a librarian in a haunted library.
Drink Deep: trigger warning. Small kid avoiding monsterous human man. Justice is served.
Leena had no voice. She did shake her head, which he caught when he glanced her way. “This is the consort’s wing, the place they stuffed your mama in before they hid her and she died. And these are things that made a Consort’s life bearable. But I don’t need that. You won’t live long enough to…”
Up Leena shot and ran around the room to get further away from the man. She had no clue what he meant by his words, but the child was precocious enough to understand that she wasn’t going to sit there and wait to find out.
The man tripped over poorly tucked away cloth, small pieces of furniture, had to leap over the bed when she crawled under, the wash stand was knocked over and the porcelain jug shattered upon impact. The whole while, Leena screamed at the top of her lungs, and the madman behind her kept laughing, calling out, “Yell harder, no one can hear you!”
All good ideas come to an end, and soon she ran into the statue, and gripped its leg in both her little arms, sobbing, “Go away!”
The man gripped her shoulder and started to forcefully pry her off the statue when Leena looked up into the face of the statue, taking in the dark horns and even darker hair. She swore it blinked at her.
With all the strength in her exhausted little body, she clung harder to the statue’s thigh, and looked up into those eye and said one pitiful little word, “Please!”
It slowly nodded and stood, placing a hand over her head to bury that little face closer to his leg as the man who scared her screamed louder and louder, until he lost his grip. Then there was silence, save for the sound of water falling to the floor, like a ripe watermelon bursting.
The statue laughed lightly, and picked up Leena, enveloping them in a world of feathers before reaching down to pick up the little Princess. To bring her into a reassuring hug, brushing his cheek against hers. It had stubble, like daddy, which helped her feel like she was at home and missing all at once.
Unlike the feeling of danger, these thoughts were too mature for her to sort out, and she sobbed her little heart out on feelings too big for the little body to handle.
…
Leena was found in the main halls curled around a bloody gold chalice made of a skull and wormy branches, sleeping innocently.
As for the scary man? The largest consort’s suite was found with a hoard of questionable toys and a complete skeleton scattered throughout, decorating the walls much like the stars in the children’s room.
peculiar lol
