Repose

When she is painted in vivid sanguine, Cessair spoke before them. Eyes of vultures promising her the gallows to matter her words, mercy long cast aside by poisoned hate.

Her tongue was heavy as lead, rust tasted in every breath. Through cracked lips, she voices the final sound of a hanged woman. "My words won't matter, anything I say will condemn me in your eyes. I tell the truth, you will accuse me of lying to save my life, I tell the lies you have conjured, it merely proves you are correct in hanging me."

Tilting her head back, greasy hair falling in clumps behind her, the amethyst-eyed woman declares. "I am Cessair Brone, I condemned my own mother to the reaper with the sin of being born. From the moment of my first breath, I have been cast aside by the world, tarnished by the falling sands of the hourglass. These blood strangers stand before accusing me of poisoning the brother I never had, eyes blinded by poison and lungs drowned in vile. No words spoken from my tongue will save my life, for my life has always been forfeit."

She stops, never glancing toward the imperial family, not caring to know what lurks inside their icy gazes. Cessair breaths in rust and speaks out her last. "Hang me from the gallows, dear ignorant masses! Hang me and revel in your false justice!"

Cessair feels the floor drop and the rope tighten around her neck, the vultures cheering for her demise. The world spins on the axis and she has returned to her mother's side.

Her corpse is left to rot, its flesh picked apart for carrion.

The imperial family returns to the palace, the emperor treating the affair as if it was another one of his meetings. His love only extends to his children, his two sons. The woman hung up on the gallows, even though she is his blood, but never his daughter. No love is needed to be given to a demon possessing his dead child's corpse. He opts to ignore how much she looked like his late wife.

Apathy comes to the crown prince's brother, not having cared when she finally died, nor having cared when he knew she was innocent. His world only moves for his family, his father and his brother. If one of them asked for the world he would give them it, if they asked for an innocent to be hanged who was he to deny? Not even her visceral final words could sway him, even if he finds he has written them down.

One voice echoes in the ears of the crown prince, the voice of a dead woman haunt him. She was the one who poisoned him, he knows she would. After all, why wouldn't she? Jealousy is powerful. Jealous of...what? Of the fact he was loved by their father, by the fact he got to be raised by his father, of if he asked for it, his father would burn the world? A part of his mind, sounding like her, merely asks him if wanting to be loved was enough for him to hate her.

Years from then, a dead woman rises from a nameless grave. She awakes her mind fogged in oblivion, fingers bloodied and caked in dirt. For the first time in years Cessair breathes anew, three strangers stood before her.

Once amethyst eyes turned to opal, copper strands given up for platinum, she stands before eternity. The silence breaks as she tilts her head, eyes puzzled. "I'm sorry have we met before?"

Those words more than anything break, one of the strangers. A man in the crown, eyes far too sad for someone who lives. "I am your brother."

Cessair laughs a little, her words shattering him like glass. "I'm sorry, I think I would remember having a brother."

Once again the world spins on its axis, this time uncertain of its path.