The lake was forbidden ever since the Princess drowned.
Once, years ago when the Princess was alive and the kingdom wasn't in peril, the lake that was found just above the royal gardens, was opened to everyone who had a wish in their heart. Some didn't believe it to be true, but others swore if you drank from the water, it would give you your deepest desire. Still, people from all over the kingdom came to the palace, paid their fee, and journeyed up the cliffside to drink from the lake.
Briar Fowley knew better than to climb the rocks that led to the translucent violet water, but each night since the death of her mother, she had dreamt of this very lake, and she was determined to ask it why. She wasn't certain that's how it worked, but if the question was her deepest desire, surely it had to be simple.
At thirteen years old, she was lanky enough to climb over the rocks with ease and still young enough to not fear the consequences, falling to her death, or worse, getting caught. If she had gone through the old entrance, where the guards stood, it would have been safer, but more likely that she would fail in her goal. Very few tried truly climbing the edge of the cliff, not with the waves slamming into the side frequently and yanking the few who dared to a watery grave, but Briar had nothing to lose and no one to return to. She wasn't scared of dying, not now that her mother was dead.
She didn't believe in the gods, a trait Briar had inherited from her mother, but if she did, she would have wondered if they were the reason the ocean had stilled just for the night. The skin of her palms painfully sliced against the stone and her legs burned as she climbed for what felt like hours.
She had worried guards would be up here as well, but to her relief, not a soul breathed near the lake. She took a moment to heave air into her lungs, her adrenaline fading with her energy as she fell to the grass. How peculiar for a cliff on the edge of the ocean to lead to a grassy lake high above. This was the magic she had read in books come to life in front of her. She crawled to the lake, unable to rise to her feet, the pulsing in the air beginning to thrum against her the closer she crawled to the edge, until she looked down at her reflection, still in the violet lake.
For some reason, her mind drifted to the princess, and she wondered how the girl had drowned, when the lake was so full of life and energy. Did she fall in? Or did she simply continue to drink from its beauty, forgetting to breathe? Slowly, as if the weight of what she had done had begun to shake her bones, Briar lifted her hand and dipped it into the lake.
A ripple shook the lake, the chill of the water digging into her bones, and she gasped, yanking her hand away. You have to drink from it, she chided herself.
Shaking, from fear or the cold, she couldn't tell, Briar cupped her hands and dipped them in the lake, pulling the violet water up to her mouth as she drank it in.
Honey. Languid, deep and too sweet coated her throat, but she swallowed it anyway.
Her deepest desire. Her heart's wish.
She didn't want to be alone.
Her mother, gods, her mother had died suffering. It wasn't fair. This life wasn't fair.
She wanted a new life. A better life, where her mother lived, and they didn't starve. With a warm meal and something to cover their bones at night.
A hand reached out from the bottom of the lake, but just before Briar could scream in terror, it wrapped around her wrist and yanked her in.
*
Atreus had watched her from beneath the veil of the lake, a foolish human who had crawled too close to the edge. It had been years since one so desperate had approached the veil and he rarely walked the hall to the ceiling of water, but as if on their own accord, his feet had turned down the path to the barrier. If his brother were to find out he had entered, he would be punished, and if he knew a human had answered his call tonight, he would take her away, see if she is the one they needed. She wouldn't be, of course, those were all fables and myths, but it wouldn't stop his brother from draining her of her Spirit and seeing if it opened the veil. Atreus had to get here before his brother finished the ritual.
Of course he shouldn't care about a human, but Atreus had noticed something different in this one. She didn't appear hopeful, or wanting, like the ones before. She looked dirty, as if she had been sleeping in the mud for weeks and the gauntness in her cheeks was uncomfortable to look at. It was her eyes though, while her skeletal body looked as if it were one strong breeze from being severed, her eyes were bright with an emotion that unsettled him.
I'll just scare her, he thought. Yank her down and warn her to never return.
And so he did, but when he touched her wrist and pulled her underneath through the veil to him, a flash of brightness overtook his vision, pain slicing his skin, and he released her from his grip as if she were cursed. The girl kicked from him, her legs furiously swimming up to the surface of the lake, before she scrambled from the veil and was out of his view.
Atreus dropped his gaze to where he had touched her wrist, a golden waning moon scarring on his palm, one he had never seen before.
Suddenly, those fables and myths didn't seem far from the truth.