Happily ever after (but I'm not happy)

From this prompt!  https://writing-prompt-s.tumblr.com/post/185453041909/its-that-typical-story-all-over-again-you-are-a 

It’s that typical story all over again: you are a princess. You get kidnapped, some random guy saves you, and then your father gets you married to him. No. Not this Time. You have watched a million versions of the same random guy beat a demon and become your husband even though you don’t love him, so this time, you kill the demon. You kill your father, the king. It doesn’t matter to you… After all, he’s only a program in the video game that is your life. 

You will stop at nothing to break this game.

Funnily enough, it’s not the kidnapping that breaks Phaedra. Oh, it’s terrifying every time--the sound of breaking glass in the dark of her bedroom, the feeling of vulnerability as blades tear into the curtain around her bed, the terror as she’s struck and thrown and tumbled over her assailant’s shoulder--but it’s not what keeps her shivering long past the story has ended. 

The attack always goes quickly. The demon screams past her guards and takes her in claws and wings and flees out the window. Her captivity sometimes goes quickly, sometimes takes a while longer, sometimes lasts forever. Sometimes the demon makes her cook and clean for him. Sometimes he tries to make her fall in love with him (as if this were that type of story). Sometimes he hurts her, badly, over and over and over again.

She’s no longer afraid of pain. She’s no longer afraid of mind tricks. She’s no longer afraid of him.

She hates being saved. She hates going home. And she’s always so afraid of the moment her father announces her hand belongs to her savior.

The moment her father gives her away is the moment that the relief from being rescued shatters. No matter how many times it happens, it’s the moment that Phaedra realizes, for all she is no longer with the demon, she is caged and helpless, just like then. Neither her savior or her father look at her when the marriage is decided. She doesn’t matter, in the end. It’s not her decision.

Her story, this horrible story, is never her own and she suffers in silence, like a good princess, as the hero locks her into a carriage and whisks her away or as her father falls ill and the hero takes his throne or as the hero reveals he is the prince of a far off land--

She is never free from her prisons, no matter how the story ends.

In the end, that is what breaks her. That is what hollows her out and starts a simmering fire, deep in her broken soul.

That is what brings death to her eyes and a blade to her hand.

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Phaedra wakes up in the soft linens of her bed. She is alone in her room, the moonlight creeping through the gauzy curtains hanging over the window. There is the yellow light of a torch flickering under the door to the hall--the guards are keeping her safe from intruders. Her lip curls.

This will be the 56th time they don’t keep her safe enough.

Her body is unmarked, as its been the 55 times before. There’re no lingering bruises from her captor or her suitor, no evidence of her attack or her rescue or her wedding night. On her 32nd time going through this, the demon had her climb the stairs to the tallest tower everyday. She misses the strength in her legs. Everything she gains, she loses when the story restarts.

She throws back the covers. She’s can’t stop the kidnapping. The story never gives her enough time to find a sword or a dagger before he comes for her. She tried braining the demon with the candlestick on the 12th, 18th, and 46th time, but she’s never been strong enough to crack through his skull. She’s not strong at all so she must be prepared instead.

She walks into her wardrobe and dresses in the leather pants her father only allows her to wear while attending his hunting parties. She puts one of her riding dresses over it, the one with long pockets sown all down the skirts. She puts the dried fruit her maids leave her for midnight snacks there as well as a change of clothes, a length of rope used to tie the curtains, and a small mirror her mother left her in the left pocket. In the right, she puts some of her jewelry, a sharp-edged comb and, after a moment’s thought, transfers half of her change of clothes from the left to the right.

Her skirt, when she looks in the mirror, sits passingly even. It’ll be jarring, when the demon takes her, and she has no doubt her extra provisions will bruise her, but what doesn’t? This way she’ll have something to eat if the demon forgets to feed her like he did through most of the twentieth times.

She lies back in bed and folds her hands over her stomach. The moonlight creeps down her bedposts, flickering as clouds slide across the sky. 

Glass breaks. The smell of burning pine and wickedness fills the room. The guards shout.

Claws shred the curtains around her bed. Evil red eyes light up as they fall on her, white teeth glinting under the cold moonlight.

“Princess,” the demon growls, wings rising above him menacingly. “You’re coming with me.”

She screams when his claws sink into her arms and her neck nearly snaps from the force with which he pulls her. She can see bits of the guards as they burst into the room, wooden door splintering, and then part of the stone ground as the demon throws her over his shoulder.

She gasps, all breath knocked out of her, as the demon’s grip tightens, compressing her diaphragm. She prefers it when he carries her out in his arms. It’s gentler. She coughs for breath and feebly punches at the space between his great, leathery wings.

He flings himself out the window, laughing like the devil he is, and takes her off into the night.

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This is the cave demon, the one who swoops too low too soon and plunges into the very depths of the earth without slowing as she screams in terror. 

He flies through the dark like he can see, though she knows he can’t. He’s more human than some of the demons who have taken her and it’s the adrenaline that he craves, more than her father’s wealth or her beauty (though both will do if he gets bored). 

He throws her into the room she’s been in before, deep underground, where water runs down one stony wall and into a hole with no end. There’s no furniture, no cot, no lavatory. It’s cool and damp in here, but the iron bars across the door show no signs of rust.

“Only the best for royalty,” the demon tells her, slamming the bars closed. He grins at her through them. “Follow the rules and maybe I’ll remember to feed you.”

The first time she was here, she asked him what the rules were. He told her that she must beg to live, must cry her pearl-like tears for mercy, and must be silent when he told her to be.

The second time she was here, he told her to never look him in the eye, to scream when he hurt her, and to sweep the dirt from the dirt floors if she wanted a chance to live.

This time she stares at him, ribs throbbing from the impact with the ground. She says, “I’m going to kill you.”

The demon’s eyes flash with surprise and then curiosity before settling on anger. “Oops,” he says, backing away from the bars, “I guess you aren’t hungry. Yet.”

She watches him sink into the dark tunnels they came through and grits her teeth. She hates the cave demon. She hates him almost more than the water demon, the one who drowned her to bring her to his kingdom, over and over and over again.

She does not hate him more than her father who is safe and warm on his throne as he searches the kingdom for her savior.

---------------------------------

The cave demon doesn’t come back the next day. She reluctantly drinks the water from the walls, knowing from experience that poisons only affect her in the witch demon’s story. It tastes disgusting, poison or no, but she’s not willing to sacrifice her limited strength to dehydration.

She eats half her fruit that night and eyes the hole in the floor. She wonders where it goes. She wonders if she’s brave enough to find out.

There’s no light in her room, except for when the torches flare to life, seemingly on their own. She thinks they signal morning, maybe, but it doesn’t really matter this far underground.

She takes out her mother’s mirror in the faint light and stares at her face. It’s dirty from the floor and bruised from the demon’s rough handling. She touches the purple on her cheek and sighs into the pain.

She wonders if her mother knew what would happen to her daughter. She wonders if that’s why her mother went into the woods and never came back. She wonders if her mother even existed or if she was a lie the creator of this story told to make her feel so very alone with her gone.

She drinks more of the dusty water and eats a little more of her fruit while she plans. The lights go out again, plunging her into darkness.

It’s in this darkness that she hears footsteps coming down the corridor. They’re quiet at first, but then louder, crunching through the dirt so deliberately that she knows she’s supposed to hear them. She’s supposed to hear them and be afraid.

She reaches into her right pocket and touches her comb, made of bone, sharp enough that it used to cut her scalp when she parted her hair. She pulls it slowly so that she’s grabbing it by the teeth, the long handle hidden in her skirts.

Her cell door creaks open and red eyes blink in the dark in front of her.

Phaedra stands. She says, “Who’s there.” She hopes he doesn’t catch the lack of question, hopes he chalks up the tension in her voice to fear. She knows who’s there.

“Poor little princess,” the demon coos. His eyes blink out and then reappear much closer. “Afraid of the dark?”

“No,” she says but knows he doesn’t believe her. 

Sure enough, he laughs. “You are.” Too quickly, she feels the heat of his body slither around her side, to her back. He reaches around her left side (thank god) and grabs her throat, claws digging into her pulse point just shy of breaking skin. “You will be.”

She sucks in a breath, hating how difficult it is to do against the pressure of his hand. She’s shaking and she tells herself it’s not from fear.

Not only from fear.

“Don’t touch me,” she says because that’s what she said the first time he did this.

Just like then, he laughs, low and mean. His breath brushes against her right cheek and then his chin hooks over her shoulder, too much contact. “I captured you, Princess. I can do whatever--”

She plunges the handle of her comb towards where she knows his eyes will be. It connects and she feels the awful scrape of bone against bone. Did she miss that badly? Had she hit his forehead? His horns?

Then the comb skitters to the side and plunges down, down, down, straight into his eye.

He falls back, screaming, hands going up to claw at his face. He loses his grip on the darkness and the torches flare bright in the hall. Her comb is wedged into his eye, almost to the teeth, and he doesn’t seem sure whether he should yank it out or not.

“I told you,” she says, her hands shaking in her skirts, “I told you I would kill you.”

His lone eye rolls until he can see her, the pain evident across his face. “You--you--you broke the rules.”

She knows instinctively that he’s not talking about his rules. He’s talking about the rules. The demon kidnaps the princess. The princess endures her captivity. The hero rescues her. They live happily ever after.

She realizes that means he knows, like she does. He’s known that he’s done this to her before, over and over again. He knows that she’s just as doomed as he is and he chose to do it anyway. He chose to hurt her every time anyway.

An unholy rage rises in her and she steps towards the raging demon, fear forgotten. “You should know this is the last time.”

He laughs, somewhat hysterically. The blood is pouring down his face and his movements are getting jerky. It’s amazing he can talk at all. “It’s never the last time.” He falls to his knees, too weak to stand. “As soon as you get your happily ever after, I’ll be back. And I’ll make you pay.”

She leans over him and gently, so gently, taps the end of the comb. “Do I look happy to you?” she asks.

The demon’s breath stills. His good eye flies wide. “No--”

She twists the comb further into his eye and then yanks it out. His good eye rolls up until she can see the white around the red. He collapses to the ground, spasms, and then lies still.

“No,” she answers for him and heads out the door.

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It takes her two days to get out of the cave demon’s lair. Some of the routes are too corroded to climb and she has to find alternative ways to the surface. She eats bats for survival and drinks the water from the walls. 

She takes off her riding dress and uses the outer skirt to make a small pack for her jewelry and her mother’s mirror and her rope. She changes into her spare clothes, an embroidered vest and another pair of pants meant to go under a gown. It’s very improper of her to be so scantily clad.

She no longer cares about proper.

She bites back a scream when she finally breaks the surface, stepping into a world that’s too bright for her cave-dark eyes.

She’s not ashamed to admit that she cries at the feeling of the sun on her skin. It’s been longer than she thought, trapped down there, maybe a week. She feels pale and wan and weak now that she’s out.

She did it. She killed the demon. She saved herself.

“Not quite,” she mutters and gingerly takes her hand away from her eyes. She can see the forest now and the thin road winding through the low branches and dense foliage. The demon isn’t the only captor she must slay before she’s free.

She takes a breath and sets off into the forest. She’ll either meet the hero or she won’t. It doesn’t matter. He’s not her captor until her father says he is.

She follows the shadows into the forest. To home.

Her comb is still clenched in one bloody fist.

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She doesn’t realize how much she doesn’t want to meet the hero until they’re standing in front of each other a day later. He’s on his white horse, alone, his armor gleaming under the high sun.

She’s on foot and her arm is still tacky with demon blood, her eyes hard and cold as she looks at him.

“My lady,” the hero says and jumps down from his horse so quickly he nearly falls. His hand goes to his sword and his eyes go to the trees around them. “What happened? Is the demon chasing you?”

She recognizes this one. He’s the one who’s secretly the first son of the neighboring kingdom. He’s the one who will whisper sweet things into her ear and means it when he tells her he loves her.

It’s hard to let go of that happily ever after, knowing how good he’ll be to her, but she has to. He may be kind, but he’s not who she chose and that means he can’t be part of her story.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, because she really is. He needs to save someone, to prove himself. She can see it in his eyes. “I’ve got to see my father.”

His fingers tighten around his sword. His eyes slide down to where she’s still gripping her comb. His face twitches, breaking into unimaginable sorrow before he hides it behind concern. “I...see.”

She nods and goes to step around him. It’s when she’s right next to him that he grabs her arm, his fingers not meaning to bruise, but bruising all the same.

“Was it me?” he asks. There’s something burning in his eyes. She thinks it might be their future together, burning down to ash. “Was I too late this time?”

He thinks she likes being passive, sitting and waiting to be rescued by a handsome prince. He thinks that this story rides on his performance, his eloquence, his beauty. He’s too good of a man to stop her, but he wants to. If he could do it without being the bad guy, she thinks he would.

But he doesn’t because he would be. His character--whoever he’s chosen to be over and over and over again--can’t handle it.

“You were...perfect,” she says. She leans forward to kiss his cheek. She leaves bat blood behind. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” he whispers.

She walks by him. He doesn’t follow her.

“He could have at least offered me a dagger,” she mutters under her breath. Nobody but the trees hears her.

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She buys a little mare from a passing merchant caravan with too much of the jewelry in her makeshift pouch. She makes them throw in one of the simple, leather bags they carry and a hunting knife. They offer to sell her food, but she declines despite their assurance it’s another five days ride to the capitol. She’s learned enough from her father’s hunts to fend for herself.

She approaches the castle very different from how she left it. Her hair is a tangled bun at the back of her head, held in place by her bloodied comb. She feels like a wild thing, sitting bareback on her little horse, gorged on rabbit she skinned herself, on berries she gathered herself,  on fish she speared herself.

She has never felt so very within her own skin before in her own life.

The blood on her face and arms--demon and bat and rabbit-- is gone, washed away in a mountain stream so cold her fingers numbed when she touched it. That’s probably why, when she gets to the gate, the guards lead her to the throne room without a second thought.

They tell her all about how worried the king’s been, how he’s spent every night since the assault pacing the throne room, waiting for word from the hero. They tell her that the candles in her room have been lit since she was taken, in the hopes that she would soon return.

She stares at them--the guards and servants--until their words dry up and their eyes drop away from hers. It’s all the confirmation she needs. They knew, just like the demon, just like the hero.

They’ve known.

She opens the throne room doors herself and closes them gently behind her.

The first eight times, the king was pacing, hands wringing, when the hero carried her dashingly into the castle. He used to worry, a pinched look on his face and his eyes forever darting to her, her bruises, the muck on her dress.

He cried at her first thirteen weddings. He smiled at the rest, the ones he bothered to attend.

(She remembers him from long ago his hands on her shoulders with pride.Back when she believed--well. It doesn’t matter what she believed.)

The king is sitting on his throne now, a heavy frown dragging across his face and a cup of mead in his hand. His eyes flick behind her, then to her face, and then back to the door as if waiting for it to open.

“You’re alone?” he asks.

Her lip curls. His first concern is for the hero, of course. “He couldn’t make it.”

The king doesn’t notice the look on her face. His expression clears and he stands, shoulders sloping with grief as he makes his way to the window. “Oh my god. That poor man, I knew he was willing to lay down his life to rescue you, but...” He looks out the window for a long moment. “We won’t forget his sacrifice.”

Phaedra’s surprised by the spike of irritation that pierces through her.  She’s irritated that he’s assumed that she couldn’t have escaped on her own. She’s irritated that he’s grieving for a boy he didn’t know instead of her, his daughter. She’s irritated that he didn’t hug her like he used to when she came in, safe and sound.

He used to care if she was hurt or scared. He used to care. 

Maybe she feels betrayed.

 She walks to bottom most step of the dais quietly and, after a moments consideration, climbs the first of the three steps. She stands there and waits for her father to look at her.

The king doesn’t look at her. He paces back to his throne and puts a hand on the back of it, steadying himself. He looks at a point over her head, eyes fixed on a far away point. “The lad didn’t want me to know, but he was the first prince of our cousins to the south. With his death, their lineage is at risk. An arranged marriage with the second prince wouldn’t be turned away, not in these circumstances.”

Now she feels betrayed.

“I was just kidnapped,” she says. Her voice shakes and she knows it sounds like she’s about to cry. She’s trying desperately to keep herself from screaming. “I just got home and you already want to send me away?”

The king finally looks at her, salt-and-pepper eyebrows flying up. “Sweetheart, of course not, I’m so grateful to see you home safe and sound. I was so worried. But we must repay the young hero’s sacrifice for the good of both our countries.”

"He’s not dead,” she says. She climbs the second step, the weight on the balls of her feet. Her comb is heavy in her hair, but she finds herself reluctant to reach for it. There’s a lump in her throat. “The cave demon is though.”

“So he killed the demon,” the king says, relieved. “Then I’ll honor his deed with your hand in marriage--”

“No!” She’s not sure who’s more surprised by her outburst--her or her father. But she’s the one who recovers first. “What if I want to stay here? What if I don’t want to go?”

The king’s expression softens. “Sweetheart.” He walks over to her, standing one step above her, and puts his hands on her shoulders like he used to when she was young. “Sweetheart, I’m just trying to make sure you get your happily ever after.”

Happily ever after. She wants to scream. He used to love her.

“I killed the demon,” she says. She’s not hurt when he pulls his hands back. She watches him retreat and tries to feel anything but the anger. “The hero didn’t come to my rescue, papa. I did.”

“You--” the king shakes his head. When he looks at her again, there’s no age in his eyes and a sort of bone deep weariness. “You weren’t supposed to do that.”

So he knew too. He doomed her to be the princess forever, rescued and bartered for--what? Trade deals and alliances that reset every time someone out there decided she was happy.

“They hurt me, papa,” she says. Her voice is very soft. “Each time you didn’t put enough guards on my room, they took me and hurt me. The water demon swept me away and drowned me. The witch demon forced poisons down my throat until I could feel them bubbling in my lungs. The wind demon laughed when he cut me--”

“Stop.” The king takes a shaking breath, real pain flashing through his eyes for a second. Just a second. Then he straightens. “We--you get your happily ever after, Phaedra, and our country prospers. Isn’t that alright? Isn’t that fair?”

“No,” she says. She climbs the next step, her hesitance dissolving as his words seep in. He thinks this is fair. Like the hero, he thinks she wants this. “No one ever asked me. That’s why it’s not alright.”

“Phaedra,” he says. He doesn’t retreat when she steps forward. He holds out a hand, beseeching. “It’s--it’s not right of me to ask this of you, but surely you can endure? It’s--the demon is only for a little while. I can be faster with the heroes. I can make sure you’re never there for longer than a day. Then you’ll be safe and you’ll have a handsome suitor to take you away--”

 “Sometimes,” she says, “they hurt me too.” Her hand creeps up and finds the cold teeth of her ivory comb. 

He sucks in a quick breath at that, eyes widening. “N-no, they’re good men--”

"That doesn’t mean I belong to them,” she says. Her lips quirk. “How can I have my happily ever after when I’m not happy?”

Something like sorrow crosses across his face. “Sweetheart--”

When she strikes, she has the mercy to be quick about it. She kills him like the cave demon and isn’t surprised when he dies faster. The king was a monster, but a human one. He bleeds out fast.

She takes her ivory comb with her when she leaves, her father’s body slumped against the foot of her mother’s throne. She could sit in his spot now, rule the kingdom with a more compassionate and honest hand than he ever did.

She knows she should. She is the only child of her father and her mother and their family is practically non-existent considering how poorly this story’s been fleshed out. She could take the throne and everyone would rejoice because her lineage is strong and a demon is dead by her hand.

It’s too much of a happy ending. It’s possible whatever curse is on her, on her kingdom, could decide that it qualifies enough to send her back to that first night. She won’t end up back here. She won’t.

There’s only one person who’s ever escaped this story.

Phaedra leaves the throne room, comb clutched in her hand, and makes her way to the woods.

-----------------------------

The people in her kingdom don’t hunt game in the Old Forest. It’s too thick, too dark, too cursed. They say they can hear women laughing in there, long past the sun has sunk to the horizon and well into the night. They say that there are strange houses that move around as if they are on legs. They say that Outsiders live in those houses, people (and things) who don’t belong, can’t belong.

It’s not a happy ending to be an Outsider. Not, at least, in the conventional sense.

She follows the ghost of her mother into the woods, knees shaking from exhaustion. Her knuckles are white and red with blood around her weapon. Her embroidered tunic is stained with the last bit of her father she’ll ever see.

She thinks this feeling in her chest is a lot like the one from that first rescue. It’s like when she didn’t know about her repeated abductions and only felt that horrible elation when she first saw the knight break into the demon’s lair. It’s like that moment when she saw the sun on his helmet and knew she might be lucky enough to go home.

It feels a lot like hope.

She walks deeper and deeper into the woods. The ground is thick with ancient tree roots, but she never trips. The branches are low and curling, but they never catch in her hair. The sun goes down and the leaves block out any light the moon might have lent her, but she is never blind.

The Old Forest drags her into its embrace and, when a house appears in the gloom ahead, perched on thin, spindly legs, she’s not afraid.  

She recognizes the skulls on the porch as inhuman, pierced through with stakes and what looks like a scepter. She is not frightened by them--she knows that there’s safety in the dead. There is a warm glow shining through the windows and she can smell something cooking through the gaps in the walls. Smoke slips through the chimney and it’s not normal smoke. It’s green and purple and sparkling as it threads its way through the canopy.

The door opens at her approach. There’s a woman, hunched forward and peering into the dark. Her hair is silver, twisting around her head in a braid and over her shoulder. She’s wearing tattered robes, stained beyond recognition, but the inside is the of the royal color.  Her nose is familiar--it’s the same hooked nose Phaedra has herself.

“Mom,” Phaedra says.

Her mother grins, wide and free like Phaedra never remembers her doing before, and opens her arms. Phaedra is up the stairs in a second, hardly noticing as the house rises on its legs just a moment later. She crashes into her mother’s arms and lets the hope shudder through her. It’s real this time. It’s real.

She’s home.