Nanowrimo 2023 Best Bit and Word Count - Day 3

Today I wrote 1,751 words, bringing my total word count to 5,436!

When she managed to prop herself up, all that met her gaze were expressions of horror and disgust. Panic filled her chest, squeezing her heart as she struggled to fill her lungs. Why were they looking at her like that? What had she done to earn such poisonous glares?

She looked to her feet, which still refused to move. A gasp caught in her throat as she laid her eyes upon them and saw exactly why they now refused to move.

One of her feet had turned to glittering, clear blue glass.

"M-mother?" she called pathetically, her voice wavering like a child woken from nightmares. Surely, her mother would make things right. Her mother would fix her, would wake her from this living nightmare. No one would look at her with such terribly angry eyes once the Queen of Blue set them right.

Shuffling off to the side caught her attention, and she turned to see her mother in the center of a similar wide circle, her face pale and her eyes wide with fear. Never had Ayden seen her mother look so small.

"I knew it!"

All eyes snapped in the direction of the triumphant voice. The clack of heels against the marble floor, echoing in the still chamber. The Queen of Red came to stand at the edge of the crowd, her face twisted in an ugly, vindicated smirk.

"What did you do?!" The King of Red shouted, coming up behind her.

"Exactly as I warned you," the Queen of Red snapped, her eyes leaving Ayden's prone form for only a moment to glare at her husband. "I warned you that if the child that grew in the Blue Queen's belly was indeed yours, then you would have doomed us all."

"You cursed a child!" the King roared.

"I cursed the one creature who could bring about the Empire of White!"

Ayden's heart stopped beating. The Empire of White? But that could only come from the blending of the bloodlines that carried the Sacred Hues. Her father was a knight of the Kingdom of Blue. Wasn't he?

"Mother!" she shouted in panic, turning to the Queen of Blue with pleading eyes. She had to stop this before that vile woman spewed more lies.

The Queen of Blue said nothing, her head bowed as a look of utter, heartrending despair overtook her face.

"Do you deny it, Radiant Blue?" the Red Queen demanded. "You told sweet Yellow that your child was fathered by a favored knight. And yet, if it was so, my curse would not have taken hold. Which is the truth?"

The Queen said nothing, her body trembling as she shrunk farther into herself. She dared not meet the eyes of the crowd.

"Nerissa." The Queen of Yellow took a single, cautious step into the ring. The Blue Queen's eyes snapped towards the gentle voice, wide and fearful like a cornered animal. "Please...what is the truth?"

The Blue Queen took a stumbling step back, as if struck by Yellow's simple question. Then, as if her own legs had turned to glass and shattered beneath her, she crumpled to the floor with a blood curdling wail.

The Yellow Queen stepped back into the crowd with a pained sound, turning to hide her face behind an open fan. Ayden could see the twins beside her, confusion evident on their faces.

"Percival," the Red Queen called, haughty and full of poison pride. "Come away from that thing. It's not worthy of your pity."

Ayden turned to the boy, who stood awkwardly not three feet from her fallen form. His fists were clenched at his side, his face scrunched up as if forcing himself not to cry.

"Percival," the Red Queen repeated. "I will not tell you again."

The boy hesitated a mere moment longer before following the Queen's orders, sparing Ayden only the briefest of backwards glances. Ayden followed him with her periwinkle eyes until he stood beside the Queen and the shamefaced King, her vision blurring as shock made way for despair.

"I don't u-understand!" she sobbed. "I didn't do anything wrong..."

"Your birth is your sin, pathetic child," the Red Queen scoffed. "Your blood has blended the hues of Radiant Blue and Valiant Red. It spits in the face of our goddess and her gifts. It is an abomination that will be the end of us all. As such, I have made it so you will never be able to bring about our end."

"W-what did you do to me?"

The queen's rouged lips twisted in a smirk. "My dear, once that glass makes its way up your body, you will be the most beautiful monument to the moral failure of your mother I could have ever asked for." She turned on her heel, refusing to look at Ayden's sobbing, trembling form any longer. "Come, my King. Let us not dwell on your failures any longer."

The King of Red lingered a moment longer, and Ayden could see the pity in his eyes.

"Please," she sobbed. "I didn't do anything wrong..."

Her pleas did not move him, more interested in saving his own neck than protecting her from the Red Queen's wrath. At least it hadn't been aimed at him.

Ayden's head fell, white hair -- for it had always been white and she had simply been blind -- falling in her face. She sobbed, hard and ugly and without restraint. No comforting words reached her ears. No gentle stranger reached out in kindness. Her own mother did not acknowledge her tears, too caught up in her own pain to care. All the while, the princess of Blue repeated the same phrase over and over again until the words held no meaning to her anymore.

"I didn't do anything wrong."