I guess shrewdly that’s why she’s really having me killed for. At least Rachel and Titan will be safe.

I receive news that Rachel is being executed for crimes Queen had committed to the fifth village.

I become courageous enough to promptly stop the wicked queen.

She barked out a spell in a furious voice full of violent rage and burning hatred. Brilliant flames whirled around her shapely hands. Queen tries to kill me with the enchanted sword’s magic. The sword does not work. It miraculously disappears.

“I’m sorry it’s come to this.” But her face didn’t contain much sentiment. She doesn’t lower her arms. “But you knew what you were getting into. You can’t keep living your life pretending there are no consequences.”

She was my consequence. I struggled vainly to find a way out of this one. All I could do was stall.

“For the suspected killing of the village of Oakheart, I hereby declare that Inka to be subjected to the trial of the gods.”

My heart pounded furiously against my sore ribs and I bit my pouting lip with shaky teeth to keep in the body-wrenching sobs. My wounded hands shook as I wiped away a lone tear, my stomach threatening to upheave the insufficient food and water I had managed to eat while waiting for this moment.

A deafening roar filled my ears, a cascade of glee and justice, the mouths of people gathered open in a war cry like no other. It filled the room, echoing off the engraved ceiling. Queen Ellen looked on smiling to himself in wicked delight as she handed me my death.

People roared, fists raised, chanting as two people stepped forward and gripped onto each of my arms. I struggled against their painful holds, sobs breaking free as they jerked me out of the chamber and through the halls. Everyone walking in the halls stopped, see as my withering pleading body was forcibly dragged and pulled towards my premature death.

The decorated doors were unlatched, the fresh of baking bread and liquor a kick in the gut, the rolling green hills dotted with sheep, mountains in the distance, tall dark trees a looming presence over the buildings of this town. The center of town, that’s where they would transport me, where they consistently took the ‘guilt and damned.’

My conviction was to be entertainment to Queen Ellen, and she believed everyone should witness.

This was the way our wicked queen managed her people, with the force of a closed fist wracking down on our weak spines, turning one against the other, killing innocents in an act of ceremonial purification. She was a tyrant, and some part of me pities the unfortunate souls that had to continue to live under her reign. Stares and whispers of passing people. But everyone else and I knew that if I were to say anything it would only make it that much worse. Rough and calloused hands pushed me to the ground, the knees of my pants covered with dirt and mud, as much of the filthy vagrant people claimed me to be.

By Cristina Collazo