The palace's garden, usually a tranquil oasis of sculpted hedges and fragrant blooms, had become a shadowy realm, a place of silent punishment hidden from the prying eyes of the world. The moon was a sliver of bone in the ink-black sky, casting eerie silhouettes that shifted and twisted along the muddy paths and manicured hedges. The air was heavy with the scent of wet earth and the cloying perfume of night-blooming flowers, a heady, disorienting miasma that clogged the senses.
A figure, a woman in a white dress now stained irrevocably with mud, knelt on the damp, yielding ground, her eyes fixed on the soil she was destroying. The dress, once pristine linen, was now a testament to her reckless defiance and the King's cold command. The muddy hem and dirt-stained fabric were a stark, humiliating contrast to the elegance of the palace that loomed behind her, a towering, silent presence whose windows, like empty eyes, seemed to watch her every move.
The rain from the previous day had left the ground a treacherous, soggy mess. Jackline's knees sank into the mud as she knelt, her weight causing the earth to yield beneath her, a perfect mirror of her own broken spirit.
Her hair was loose, a tangled mess of red strands that fell down her back like a waterfall of fire in the dark. Her face was flushed with exertion and rage, her eyes fixed intently on the patch of ground where she was meant to be working.
As she knelt there, the only movement was the gentle rustling of the leaves in the breeze, the soft sound of her ragged breathing, and the frantic scrabbling of her fingers in the dirt.
She couldn't believe this was her life. She was digging the ground with her bare hands, doing something she didn't know how to do. Christopher hadn't respected her title when he made her uproot the weeds in the garden as her "punishment." She had tried to refuse, shocked by his absurd, demeaning command, but he had simply looked at Ramien with a silent promise of a far worse fate, and she had known she had no choice. Ramien would have to pay, and she wouldn't let that happen.
"I hate you, Christopher," she hissed through gritted teeth, her voice a low, fierce whisper in the night air. In her frustration, she had just ripped out a perfectly good carrot instead of a weed. She didn't even know what weeds looked like. This was the worst type of humiliation ever; he had turned the Queen into his personal garden worker, a mockery of her title. He just stood there at the edge of the path, a dark silhouette against the palace lights, watching her suffer, his face a mask of indifference.
She was struggling to even kneel properly, the slippery mud making her lose balance again and again. The cold night air was a caress on her skin, but she didn't feel it; all she felt was the all-consuming, fiery rage in her heart.
To make the matter worse, a single drop of water hit her face, then another. It started raining, a fine, cold drizzle that quickly turned into a steady downpour. It was as if the gods themselves were making fun of her plight. The white dress clung to her skin, a second skin, the rain making it hard for her to see through the wet hair plastered to her face. She removed the strands of hair from her eyes with her muddy hands, smearing dirt across her flushed cheeks. "I hate you," she breathed again, the words a silent plea to a cruel universe. She still couldn't believe the situation, the absurdity of it all.
"Don't you think you're going too far?" Alex's voice cut through the sound of the rain. He stood next to Christopher, watching the poor girl struggling in the mud. His expression was one of genuine concern.
"She wanted to be punished," Christopher's voice held no emotion, it was flat and cold. "Who am I to defy her request?"
"She's human, Christopher," Alex said, a sharp edge to his voice. "She will get sick. Then what?"
That appeared to move something in him. A flicker in the dark eyes, a slight shift in his posture.
He walked into the rain towards the princess, his perfect blonde hair immediately soaked and plastered to his forehead. He stopped in front of her, looking down at her mud-stained, defeated figure.
"At this rate," he said, his voice a low, smooth baritone, ignoring her state entirely, "don't you think we would have more weeds than crops?"
The red-haired queen raised her head slowly, her green eyes, filled with a palpable hatred, finally met his cold, blue gaze. The rain lashed down around them, a private storm in a public garden, the battle lines drawn in the mud.