Uprising

I sat tall in my seat, doing my best to keep the corset from digging into my sides any more than usual. It’d be a long day, and I didn’t want to end it with my ripping myself out of my dress in a drunken rage. I was in one of the front row pews, staring at the throne at the center of the room. The priests and loyal council members stood around, waiting for the coronation to start.

As more of the royal family filled in, I spotted him. A tall, dark-haired man, dressed in a black suit, his dark hair swept back, and a dashing smile on his face. My smile grew as he got closer, taking the empty seat next to me. “I didn’t know you were coming,” I tell him, smoothing out the fabric of my rather large dress.

It was a newer style, the neckline was lower, the straps were around my shoulders with lace, the corset down my waist, and it spread out in a mess of fabric, lace, tulle, and detailed embroidery. It truly was a beautiful dress, but not one I would’ve chosen for my cousin’s coronation. Perhaps my own.

“I wasn’t sure if I would, either,” the man, Nicholas, commented, his eyes wandering down from my hairstyle to the hem of my dress. “You look radiant,” he whispered, leaning closer to tell me. “It should be your day becoming queen.” His compliment made me blush, as it always does, and my smile widened even more.

Nicholas’s family was very close friends with my family. We practically grew up together. Even with him inheriting his Duke title from his late father, Nicholas was always around, smiling, joking, shaking hands, and always willing to dance with me at parties. He was my father’s pick of a possible husband for me. One of the few picks my parents made that I didn’t argue about.

“You look like you’re going to a funeral,” I tell him, earning a chuckle. His swift exhale made its way down my neck, leaving goosebumps behind as my heart quickened. “I visited your father today. He proposed an idea to me,” Nicholas’s face withdrew slightly so that I could look into his eyes. “Did he?” I asked, not wanting to get my hopes up. “I suppose after today, your mother will go over the details,” he said, his piercing blue eyes looking away from me to the center of the room. “Possibly any wedding plans very soon.”

I couldn’t fight back my delight as my smile almost turned wild, my hand resting on his. Nicholas looked back at me, his narrow and soft face leaned closer to me, pecking me on the lips as I giggled. “Nicholas!” I hissed, gently pushing him away. “We can’t do that here!”

“I’m sure the priests won’t mind,” Nicholas promised, his hand holding mine. “It’s official now, you’re to be my wife. I should be able to kiss you whenever I like.” I lay my head on his shoulder, my smile beginning to hurt as the music began. We untangled ourselves from each other as the music started, rising to our feet. As my cousin came in, wearing a pure white suit with his hair pushed back and a sword strapped to his hip. “Doesn’t he look marvelous?” I asked Nicholas. “You could look like that for when we’re crowned at home.” When Nicholas didn’t reply, I looked up at him, seeing a solemn look on his face. “That might be sooner than you think…” He whispered to me.

“What?” I asked, suddenly hearing my heart in my ears. Nicholas reached into his coat as he looked down at me. “You’ll be safe with me.” He promised, before pulling out a gun and shooting my cousin in the chest three times. As the echoes of the gun melded into the screams of the crowd, more people came out of the shadows, shooting everyone down. I could barely think. I pushed away from Nicholas, gathering my skirt, and I ran, dodging falling bodies and other family members running away from the chaos as Nicholas screamed for me. I didn’t dare look back.

There was this magical cottage that my Aunt Cheree told me about before she died. She swore there were doors there that could lead anywhere in the world you’d want to go. We passed by where she claimed it was, but we only found a run-down shack with barely a door and two windows.

I found myself running in its direction, diving into the woods near the estate as gun fire echoed around me, more of my family, my friends dying behind me. Don’t stop. I told myself. You stop, you die. I ran, even when the heels of my shoes broke and I had to continue barefoot. I ran even when my eyes filled with so many tears that I could barely see. I ran until I found a place to stop—a seemingly empty cottage house with plain clothes hanging on the line. I went behind the house and ripped myself out of the dress, the corset, and the shift, putting on a man’s tunic and pants before I continued running, something in my blood giving me directions in the dawn.

Then I saw it, a run-down shack with white brick, a roof threatening to cave in, and a door that was simply a plank of wood. Go. Something told me. Go inside! I didn’t argue with the voice. It led me this far, I wasn’t going to question it now. I made it to the door, my lungs screaming for air as I stopped to open it, only for Nicholas to be standing there, his hair disheveled, out of his black suit and in plain clothes. The teasing glint in his eyes was gone, replaced with rage as he grabbed my face, holding it tight as he stared down at me, all the softness gone as his jaw tightened.

“You were going to leave me.” He stated, his voice edging on wild. “No,” I said through the grip as his fingers tightened, making talking even more difficult. “You just did!” He screamed, pulling me inside. The inside of the shack didn’t match the outside. The interior was beautiful, featuring brick walls, wooden floorboards, and two sets of stairs: one leading down and one leading up. The living room was full of Nicholas’s friends, all changed into something similar to Nicholas’s clothes.

“Told you she’d come here,” Nicholas announced to the group, throwing me to the ground. I caught myself at my hands, my legs collapsing under me. “Take her downstairs.” He ordered the men, still glaring down at me. “Maybe a few days down there will teach her something about loyalty.”

“Nicholas!” I screamed as one of his friends grabbed my arm and threw me over his shoulder. “Don’t do this, please!” I cried, more tears falling down my face, as he just stared at me with a cold expression.

The first two days in the basement, I was chained by the ankle to the wall, alone. Save for the meals delivered to me by Nicholas’s friends. I didn’t know their names, but I knew they were all just as noble as he was. What I didn’t realize was that they all shared the same idea of usurping the throne here in Adria.

The morning of day three, I woke up to screaming coming down the stairs, and saw five girls in everyone’s arms, their dresses nothing more than rags, their hair loose from their careful hairstyles. Each of them were chained to the wall like me, but one of them, a girl with mousy brown hair, kept fighting the man chaining her, even when he smacked her. She just looked at him and spat blood in his face.

“Leave her,” said one of the other men as they headed for the stairs. “It won’t be long for her.” They climbed the stairs, closing the metal door behind them, sucking away any sound from upstairs.

I looked at the women chained, and realized with a jump… I knew them. “Anna?” I called out to the closest woman. She was my age, with long red hair and even longer legs that were splattered with mud and blood. “Oh Gods, Augusta!” She cheered, scrambling as close as she could to me. “You’re alive!” My name caught everyone else’s attention.

May, with her perfect dark hair, now roughly cut to her shoulders.

Constance—Connie, with her blonde hair and petite frame.

Beatrice, with her beautiful curls, was taking a break from fighting against her chains to look my way.

And finally, Bethany. The one fighting from the moment she arrived until the moment she heard my name. These were my closest friends, my lady’s maids, whom I brought with me from Litha.

“I am so happy to see you all.” I cried, extending my hand out to Anna’s, our fingertips just barely touching. “We’ve been hiding in a city nearby, but they pillaged the place and found us before we could go home,” Anna confessed. “Forgive us, princess, we thought you were dead.” I shook my head. “Don’t apologize to me. Never apologize to me.” I sobbed out, the other women’s words yelling over each other. They were silent as the door opened again, followed by the light and careful steps of someone approaching. I backed up the wall, Anna following my lead as Nicholas rounded the corner, a single key in his hand as his eyes were trained on only me.

I was allowed upstairs for months. My friends would be allowed upstairs with me, too. The two of us would be dressed in plain but formal dresses and carted around whenever the group of men went on a pillaging trip nearby. As the days went on, towns would just surrender and bend the knee to Nicholas and his friends. Then, there were weeks where I was alone in my room, just getting fed, taken outside while chaperoned closely by one of Nicholas’s friends. There was hardly any time I was alone.

Then, one day, during lunch, Nicholas returned after being away for a month, accompanied by a tall, muscular man with wet hair, who thrashed around between Nicholas and one of his loyalists. “Bring her,” Nicholas growled to the man nearest me. His name was Clarence, I believe. Clarence was one of the more sympathetic men, but not so much that he wasn’t repulsed by the idea of hitting me if I asked too much of him.

Clarence rose, pulling me to my feet by my arm as he pulled me behind Nicholas, pushing me along anytime there was a moment I stopped or hesitated. They went down to the basement, and went past the walls my friends and I were confined to, and into a hidden room with a plastic mask with two different tubes connected to it, and a chair with straps and handcuffs attached. Nicholas forced the man down, and as he looked up at me, I was taken aback with familiarity. I knew who this was. His name was Richard, son of Marcus, Nicholas’s knight, whom he brought from Litha. He stopped struggling when Nicholas threw a hit to his face, cracking his nose. I looked away as Clarence turned me around. “Watch.” He told me that Nicholas attacked this clear mask around Richard’s head, adjusting some sort of tube in his mouth.

“This is what happens to those who betray me,” Nicholas told the room as the other, longer tube started bringing in water, quickly filling the thing around Richard’s head. “What are you doing?!” I heard myself cry out, lunging for Richard. Nicholas smacked me to Clarence’s feet, the pain blooming around my cheek. “What’s necessary, my love,” Nicholas told me before he got low to the ground, his face inches away from mine. “And I’ll do it to anyone I need to.” I looked over at Richard, watching his panicked eyes close, his chest rising and falling heavily as he breathed.

I didn’t know how long it’d been at this point. There didn’t seem to be a point in keeping track. By now, all of us were upstairs, paired off with the men in the cottage. As far as I knew, they were all still virgins, like I was. For now, at least. Only two more cities, and we’ll have the country under our thumbs,” Nicholas announced at dinner, one of his mistresses smiling brightly at his side. “Then we’ll return to the castle and rule as one.” The men cheered, the mistress clapped, and I looked over my friends, feeling hollow. There wasn’t much of a reason for us to join in. Our… Husbands liked it better when we were silent.

We all slept in the same room, everyone but me was chained to their beds until the new loyalists came to wake us up, watch us bathe, dress, eat, and go on with our wifely duties. There was no privacy, barely any trust, or concern for us. We were there to make heirs, and nothing more.

I saw Richard around the house, but his eyes were empty, his hands were burned, and his neck had a long slash down the side. Whatever they did to him, it broke him in ways I could never understand. He never spoke to anyone. Not even when given demands, he’d just nod and follow whatever directions he was given.

“How long before they do that to us?” Beatrice asked with tears in her eyes. “Richard was a good man… Honorable and kind…” She covered her mouth to keep the sobs in as the tears rolled down her face. “It won’t,” Bethany promised her, holding her free hand. “Trust me.” It was the only thing Bethany would tell any of us in our slim moment of privacy. ‘Trust me.’

I didn’t know when it would happen, or how, but I trusted the spark left in Bethany’s eyes, the way she openly glared at her ‘husband’. I had nothing left.

They only had one more city to capture, just a few miles from here. I could see it on clear nights from my bedroom window. Once the men returned home, we began cooking their dinner, and I watched Anna accidentally drop a bottle of wine as Bethany lit a candle. “Run.” She told us. We didn’t hesitate. I ran for the back door, Anna and May were at my heels, and Connie went out the window as Bethany dropped the candle, following Connie as the kitchen erupted into flames. The men were too drunk in the front room to notice until the smoke started to build.

It’d been too long since any of us ran, since any of us had to use our bodies for any physical labor. I wasn’t sure if we’d make it to the barn, but we did. May and Connie shared a horse as Anna, Bethany, Beatrice, and I got our own, saddling them up as I heard the men start to scream for us. “Go!” I commanded them, the women taking off in different directions.

I climbed onto my horse and set off down the country road, feeling the wind in my long, tangled hair, my eyes stinging as I smelled the smoke growing stronger the farther I was from that once magical place. But I was free. We were all free.

I lost track of the girls almost immediately after our escape began. I went into the mountains as they stayed closer to towns and cities. There were smaller towns in the hills, generous enough to let me rest there, give me supplies and new clothes, and cut my hair short, but would ask me to leave the moment the sun rose. I understood why, of course. They were spared from Nicholas’s cruelty up to this point, and my presence there was a threat to that. If Nicholas had a mage with him to track any of us, no one was sure, but it hardly mattered.

The town I stayed longest in was more like a village, high up in the mountains, almost impossible to get to, even with a well-trained horse. I was nervous of her fainting due to the altitude when an elderly woman took us in, watered my horse, fed us, and allowed me to sleep in a real bed. “It’s a shame what this country has come to.” The woman told me once I was awake. “You know who I am?” I asked her. She laughed, nodding. “Yes, and you won’t make it to the border without a weapon, young lady.”

For three months, she, her son, and her granddaughter taught me how to shoot, reload, and clean a gun. They helped train my horse to recognize the sound of gunfire without bucking, and would make me do exercises before breakfast and before I went to bed. I could’ve stayed there for the rest of my days, happily.

After nearly a year, I left their home and descended the mountain with a tent, blanket, men’s clothes, two guns, and three sets of ammo for each. Then, I heard it. As I came across a river on the flatlands, I heard someone calling my name. “Augusta!”

Behind me, I saw my girls. Bethany, Beatrice, May, Connie, and Anna, dressed in men’s clothes and their hair cut short. Hope bloomed in my chest as I heard my name from the other side of the river. “Augusta!” I turned and saw Nicholas standing there, his men surrounding him as energy radiated off their bodies. Fear almost consumed me, but I felt the biting metal and wood of my gun in my hand. I rose it, and aimed it straight for the man I once believed I loved.