Prologe
A young, golden-eyed woman stood in the window of the tallest tower, gazing with an absent-minded gaze at her subjects running in droves through the castle courtyard. Had it not been for years of nutrient-poor diet and an equally long period of worry, there would not have been a person who would have been indifferent to her beauty. Meanwhile, the dirt on her face and her features, sharpened by a lack of body fat, meant that the woman did not attract much attention. Only her eyes - almost unnaturally large against the backdrop of her swarthy face - attracted attention with their unusual color.
An icy wind came through the open window and smeared her face, along which tears flowed incessantly. Suddenly she felt something tighten in her throat, and a long-restrained sob shook her body. After a long time, she managed to calm down, straighten her shoulders crushed by the immense weight of pain, and gradually cooled down. She rarely allowed herself such moments of weakness. At least since she turned sixteen.
The woman struggled to push the painful memories away, but they kept coming back, haunting her like shadows that never go away. If only she could find something to focus her thoughts on.... If she could... No, she didn't want to think about it. However, the past had other plans.
The image of a little seven-year-old girl kneeling in a pool of blood suddenly appeared in her mind. The child clung to her mother's cool hands. With a superhuman effort that such a young child would not normally be able to afford, she moved her mother's stiffened body into her room. After locking the door, she further barricaded it with a chair, propping up the handle. She was still too young to understand that such security would not stop the killers who had taken her mother from her. Or maybe she realized that? Maybe she knew that her time was limited. But she wasn't going to run away right away. She had to allow herself to despair for at least a moment, a second longer. In silence, she shed tears over her mother's body, ignoring the insistent voice in her head that screamed the need to flee. But she still had something to do.
Slowly she straightened her small, skinny arms, which seemed to be crushed by a huge weight. The tears stopped flowing, and the fog that had clouded her vision receded. Bright golden eyes turned to the door. Despite the fact that her small, frail body was trembling from the effort so far, she climbed over the bumps protruding from the wall and through the narrow gap between the walls into the adjacent room. The little creature did not know how much longer she would have enough strength to protect herself from the assassins and remain unnoticed. Only the power of determination allowed her to stay on the high beams for so long. Thanks to her petite, childlike figure, she was able to move unhindered along the rafters placed under the ceiling. It was thanks to this ability that the assassins did not notice her when they raped her mother in front of the child's eyes, and then, with a terrifying snap, broke her neck. Sunk in drunken amok, they didn't even notice that the woman's body suddenly disappeared almost silently taken from the room by a small childlike figure. Now, singing more and more bawdy songs and shouting merrily, they did not notice the little girl, who once again climbed to the rafters and quietly moved under the roof observing each of them, and watching them carefully. She saw them all perfectly. She remembered every face, every insulting text thrown at her murdered mother. Only two more, and she could leave. Two more faces to remember, and she could leave. She had to find her father. And though her heart ached because she had to leave her mother's body here she had to inform her father of what had happened.
Just as she was about to head for the door, she noticed a terrified boy in the corner. He was not much older than her, perhaps her age. Through a haze, she remembered that he cried when her mother was murdered. He had been present then. So she must have remembered him as well. For a long moment she stared at his big blue eyes, full of fear, stuck in a pool of blood. She also paid attention to the pendant with a blue crystal that the boy wore around his neck. She could see the bruises on his body, the marks of the blows inflicted by one of the assassins, but it didn't move her. She wasn't going to wonder who he was or what he was doing here. The mere fact that he was a witness was enough for her. Unexpectedly, the boy raised his head, as if sensing that he was being watched, and looked straight into the eyes of the girl watching him. The child's heart began to beat frantically, as if it wanted to get out of its possessor's body. It was time to get going before the boy alerted the assassins. Once again, breaking eye contact with the boy one last time, she looked toward the closed door, then disappeared into the starless night. If only she had known then what she knew now. If she had at least suspected that this would be the last time she would be free to stroll through the courtyard she probably would have directed her steps somewhere else entirely. At the time, however, she had not yet guessed that she had been betrayed by the one who should guard her at all costs.
A sudden knock sounded in the silence of the chamber, which snapped the woman out of her depressing thoughts and allowed her to sober up a bit. She wondered why the guards even bothered to knock. The door was locked, after all, and the key was not hers. The knocking was repeated, but the prisoner did not intend to answer or take part in this game of pretenses. Instead, she wiped her cheeks wet with tears, removing traces of recent weakness, and proudly straightened her figure.
She was not going to show fear or any weakness. Although she was only a prisoner here, she would not allow herself to be weak and pathetic, not after all she had been through. This was the only way she could show that despite all these years of humiliation, they had not broken her. That they continued to have a flesh and blood person in front of them, who has her own character and believes in her convictions. They didn't need to know that this was just a game on her part. An acting show of a living corpse. Because that's what she was. A living corpse with no chance of salvation. She had long since broken and given up. It was only with remnants, with the splinters of rebellion that she did not let them know about it.
The first to enter the cell was an elderly, though handsome, guard, whom the woman even managed to like, though she knew that this changed nothing about her situation. Immediately after him, a small, unassuming maid entered. The door closed with a quiet click, and the key rasped in the lock on the other side. The walls of the chamber glowed with blue light, momentarily revealing the magical barrier that imprisoned the woman in this room and at the same time prevented anyone unauthorized from entering. As if anyone would start visiting her here. Apart from the guards guarding her and this servant girl, only one person knew that the tower was "inhabited." And she by no means intended to stoop to visiting such a place. Well, and there were still "they".... But she didn't want to allow herself to think about them.
The golden-eyed woman smiled crookedly. The servant girl avoided her gaze, but the guard followed her closely, watching her every move. The woman did not understand why all these precautions. She had been locked up, shackled in cursed chains for more than fifteen years, and had left the chamber only four times. Her predicament was truly pitiable. She knew that even if by some miracle she managed to break free, she would not have the strength to escape. She was given so little food that she barely kept herself alive. She was emaciated, and the lack of movement had led to muscle atrophy. Escape in this condition was impossible.
A servant placed a bowl of clean water on a dilapidated dressing table. This piece of furniture, along with a simple, too-short bed and a bucket that served as a toilet, constituted the entire decor of the cell. Apart from them, a comb and a simple shirt, the prisoner had nothing. Well, except maybe "them." But "they" didn't really belong to her at all.
The young girl quickly picked up the bowl of dirty water and the filled bucket, trying not to drag out her visit. The inmate knew that she would return once again with the emptied potty, but the guard remained in place. When the door closed behind the servant, he took out an old, tattered book from behind his uniform. The prisoner, wasting no time, reached under the almost completely destroyed mattress, from where she pulled out the previous book he had left for her. The guard handed her the new volume with a polite smile, and when the servant re-entered the cell, he was already standing at the door with an implacable face.
The books brought secretly by the man were the only way she could escape the hopelessness of the situation. Through the stories in them, she was able to explore the world and learn many things. It was this elderly but still handsome man who taught her to read. Often, during night shifts, he kept her company, answering countless questions, first of a little girl and then of a young woman. Once he admitted that he had a daughter her age. The girl was not naive enough not to understand that it was because of the pity he felt for her that the man risked bringing her books and teaching her about the rules of the outside world.
- When you leave here, this knowledge may come in handy," he used to say. He was deceiving himself, but the girl did not want to reproach him for it. She knew that deep down he himself realized the illusory nature of those words. Besides, she didn't want to lose the one man who was kind to her, the only one who didn't want to hurt her. When other guards stood guard, things were different.
In the long, lonely moments when she was all alone, the girl dreamed. About freedom, about life outside the tower, about the future. She watched the world through the chamber's only narrow window. From this height, at the top of the tower, she couldn't clearly see the people roosting in the courtyard, or what they were doing. However, thanks to the books, she learned one very important thing - to use her imagination. Looking down on the people, who looked like ants from this distance, she imagined how they lived, what they did, how they loved.
The servant returned, but this time, in addition to the emptied nightstand, she brought something else - a long, modest, dark gown. The prisoner understood in a flash what it meant. Such situations rarely happened, in the last fifteen years on four occasions at most. Wasting no time, the maid took a sponge and gestured for the girl to come up. A thorough scrubbing of her entire body and dressing awaited her. Today the girl was about to leave the tower for the fifth time since her own father locked her in it fifteen years ago.
