The Queen of Hidden Fae

“In a time of old and new,

when none are told of you,

the future will be history’s past,

and I, will come around, at last.”

Who am I?"

DAPHNE

I am surrounded by a riot of beast and Fae as I kneel before a tyrant. My limbs feel heavy and sluggish, as if I've been wading through quicksand or mud. The footsteps behind me, on the cold lavender of a frozen river, are marked in a shadow of blood decorated by the boots on my feet. Black dust and red starlight, blood of the hundreds of fae that were slain in battle.

The air is charged with malevolent energy, and I am finding it hard to draw breath.

The roar of a hundred armies dies in my ears as I am met with the failure of my end and the betrayal of my fool driven heart.

He stands there just beside her. The man I know to be more beautiful than any God once imagined. The man I gave my soul to. That I once trusted would stand at my side.

He stares back at me with the cold swirl of jaded eyes. Iron darkness painted with false regret. He looks pained. He looks tormented. But he also looks resolved.

He's going to do it. Just as was planned once in the tale of an old rhyme.

My tears freeze upon my face as I look up at him, words dying on my tongue as my folly rises to choke me.

The one that approaches from his side is more beautiful than any I have ever seen. She is all that I am not. A warrior, a winner, a frozen Faerie Queen with a frost gilded heart.

She speaks to me in a whisper on a glacier wind. She says, "You thought you had him, didn't you? You thought you could stop a magic set in motion long ago. That your child alone might change him. Didn't you?" She laughs and I force my chin up to glare at her.

Looking beyond her, to him, I am pleading with my eyes that he make this pain end quickly. That at the very least of everything, he makes my agony swift.

He doesn't answer, a sad frown cracking across his face as he lifts the enchanted blade from its resting place on the wreathed stone of The Great Fae River.

The evil angel leans close to me and I can feel the chill of her lips when she speaks. "He may have loved you... a little. But there is something all Fae covet more than hearts and happiness. Something you will never have again. Power."

The platinum crown of nails that sits upon my head prevents me from lashing out, from cloaking myself, from defending myself, and as the one that placed it upon my brow nears me, circling me as if he never held me in his arms, as if he never sought to protect me, I feel as if I have died already.

Everything is lost.

The Winter Queen smiles and stands to her full height as my love stops behind me and yanks back my head, placing the blade at my throat. He stares down at me and there is a quiver of sadness in his silvered eyes that runs so deep I can taste it in the memory of his kiss.

All I can do is whisper, "I loved you."

His hand trembles as he brings the blade to my throat, but he shakes his head, tears filling his eyes as he whispers, "I know."

All that comes next is warmth and pain and as I scream into the wind, the shadows of the forest weep.

I awaken with a start, grasping at my throat with cold, grime covered hands and wondering what dream plagued me as I slept.

It felt so real but try as I might, I cannot remember it. However the sadness that accompanies my coherence has only to do with the chains on my wrists.

Why have I not been executed yet?

Why must I remain here to suffer before death?

A glance around tells me that it must be morning. The day after my sentencing.

I was told I was to die by midnight last eve. But yet, I remain alive in the dungeon of Hadimere Palace as I await my beheading.

"How long shall they take to fetch my head? I shall be a corpse by the time they finally come."

Yesterday, the nobles of the kingdom surrounded me like a mob. Treating me like criminal as King Hadimere gazed down on me with cold blue eyes, the irises nearing black with contempt. Yet I am not the one that owed him a debt. No. I am merely the one to answer for it.

My father left me here. To die in his stead. He is the one that owed for his gambling... for his whoring. Not I!

But I suppose the fact that he has always blamed me for my mother's death played a large part in his choosing of payment.

The loud screech of an iron door above the wind of stone steps catches my attention and I leap to my feet. Loud, echoing footfalls numbering in the plural drum like music serenading that my time has come.

A gasp spills from my lips as the guards round the corner. For they are led by the most hauntingly beautiful man I have ever seen.

Oh my.