Chapter Text
“That face . . .”
That day was a jumble of bad memories that Marianne didn't like to dwell on. During the daylight hours she shoved them away, refusing to think upon Roland's betrayal, to feel the burn of anger it caused in her chest, refusing to recall the gaunt face in the gloom, faded sunlight catching icy pinpricks of eyes . . .
Marianne's sword lowered, hanging from her slack fingers, ready to fall at any moment. Her handmaidens fussed around her, wondering why she had stopped in the middle of practice, but Marianne was lost in her thoughts. The memory of her brief moments in the Dark Forest had a nasty habit of popping up without invitation or provocation and when they did she couldn't tear her attention away from the haunting details of the encounter. It hadn't even been a full minute, just a matter of seconds, and she played those over and over in her head, trying to . . . trying to what? Dispel her fear? Overcome the terror she felt?
But she knew why.
Because it was a story not yet finished.
Her mind kept trying to finish it for her. At night her dreams would pull her back into that gloomy forest, drag her beyond the primroses and in, deeper and deeper, far past the point she had ever gone in the waking world. In the dream she lost all sense of direction, even if she ran she had no idea if she was running toward safety or further into the enemy's domain. Branches caught at her wings, claws snatched at her feet and she kicked, but this time the claws didn't let go, gave her no chance to drop the petal and fly.
This time she was yanked out of the air, a primrose petal still clutched in her white-gloved fingers, and scaly hands scraped harshly against the skin of her arms, catching the fabric of her dress. They delivered her up before that vague shadow, sharp in the gloom and monstrously tall. The face with its razer-sharp edges turned to her, its eyes nothing more than black holes, and it reached out a hand, pointing an accusing claw—long and sharp enough to take the flesh off her bones—at the petal in her hand. Her fingers were wrapped so tightly around it that the petal was crushed and bruised, its scent heavy in the air.
Here in the heavy darkness she had no voice to cry out, her feet would not move, and her wings would not unfold. All she could do was stand there and look up at that shadowed face, a deeper shadow against the dark backdrop of the forest. The creature had no real shape. In reality she had barely seen the creature so her dreams filled in the gaps with vague shadows that crawled and rustled, only his face defined in any real detail.
That face . . .
That furious, snarling face, lips twisted over jagged fangs, bark covered brow drawn down to shade its eyes. It had looked like it was wearing a crown, pulled low over its eyes, but even in that brief glimpse she had seen that it was part of the goblin's head, and that made it all the more terrifying. This horrible creature, covered with leaves and bark instead of skin and hair . . . there was no space in her mind for it, no context to put it in to make herself understand. It was completely other to everything she knew. It was the face of the unknown that haunted the kingdom, of the unseen horrors that lurked in the Dark Forest.
It was the face that pulled in close just before she woke from her nightmares. If she was lucky she woke right before the claws reached her, waking with her fingers clutching the petals of the bed like it was the stolen primrose, her throat tight like she had been screaming even though not a sound had escaped her. If she wasn't lucky she didn't wake up until the claws raked across her arms, shredding skin and flower petals in streaks of red and pink.
That face haunted Marianne because she still didn't know.
She didn't know what would have happened if that face had gotten closer, if that clawed hand had reached out. Didn't know if that glimpse of blue in the shadows had been a trick of the light. She imagined so many things but she could never know what the outcome would have been.
The soft chirping of her handmaidens brought her back to warm and sunlit reality. Marianne's fingers tightened around the hilt of her sword and she raised the blade, nodding for her handmaidens to resume practice. She didn't know. The story was still unfinished. So she prepared herself, trained herself, so when she saw that face again she would banish her fear back into the darkness and have the power to end this story on her own terms.