The empire had just gone to war, smallpox was taking us all down one after another, plunging the kingdom into a macabre silence of death.
I was alone in that immense castle, sleeping in the freezing cold against my mother's lifeless body.
I would probably have died if the servant's daughter, Lorea, hadn't come to get me. I hadn't caught smallpox despite all that exposure to the sick, and neither had she. She said it was both our destiny, that our duty was to live and bear our family name on our shoulders.
I knew it from the first day, I knew she was my sister, but I kept quiet so as not to upset Mama. Her eyes were the same color as mine and Father's. She just didn't have the same mother as me, that's why she had beautiful blond hair and darker skin.
Oh, how beautiful she was and how strong she was. She took care of me and I gave her everything, everything I had been, the most precious thing of all...the Beste name. After our father's death, I took power at the tender age of 11, and the Beste title fell to me. Everyone was dead, my uncle, my mother, no one was there to take up the name except me, the eldest. I registered Lorea in the family register, thinking I was offering her the position to live a trouble-free life, inheriting the Beste fortune along with me. I thought of a peaceful life with the money we could share, but she didn't think that way. She saw further, she saw right through me. We slept in the same bed, we ate and washed together
She knew everything about me, including my dreams.
If I hadn't told her, everything would have been better, but my naivety knew no bounds. Having always lived in the golden world, I never thought darkness could touch me.
"I dreamt of a man. He had jet-black hair, eyes as blue as the sky...but he was sad, he had a very sad expression that made me cry."
"And what did this man do?" Lorea said, staring at me, her gaze fixed on mine, still red with tears.
"He was brandishing his sword, ready to take another man's life. He was a man with a very hard look, marked by time...his hair was blond and his eyes green, blood was flowing from them like tears because he was already badly wounded. This man was the strangest; he didn't seem sad to die. He bowed his head and presented his neck...he was just cold because he was kneeling on the pristine snow."
I often had dreams like this since my parents died. Lorea called them nightmares and said the only cure was to talk about them. This one was different; it came back every night, the same scene and the same feelings that made me cry and gripped my throat as if someone were strangling me.
I ended up painting this scene even though I had never touched a paintbrush in my life. The painting was so realistic that it was hard for Lorea to take her eyes off it. She would end up "throwing it in the fire," as she told me, even though I knew very well that she had simply hidden it
My nightmares had stopped thanks to that painting, so I began to paint many of my dreams, each one more detailed and strange than the last. Lorea sold them as our livelihood to save our family fortune and to make us known to resistance networks wanting to overthrow the newly appointed King of Sarrera, a tyrant with a man's name, Hitzac Scavy, a 23-year-old boy. The king's nephew, everyone knew he was actually the queen's hidden son, protected by his uncle all these years.
I remember one day, when I was almost 12, Lorea was taking vegetables out of her basket and removing her cloak in dismay. She seemed angry.
"I met a boy at the market today. He told me he thought your paintings were very pretty."
"Really? He thinks my paintings are pretty?"
I would get out of bed smiling. Because of my delicate health, although I had escaped smallpox, I couldn't go out into the cold winter like Lorea did. So I spent most of my time shut up in the right wing of the castle reading my books.
"He would like to meet you. He's 15, but he seems nice."
"He's a young man?! Like the prince in my stories?"
"Stop your nonsense, he was a nobleman but far from a prince." Rolling her eyes to the sky and snatching my book away so I would help her prepare dinner.
It was the first time I'd heard of Behean Odola, a young man with jet-black hair and blue eyes like the man in my vision. She'd neglected to mention that she'd been the one to approach him first, finding him similar to the figure in my painting, even though, when I'd first seen him, I'd known immediately it wasn't him, despite their identical features. Behean was more handsome than I'd expected, and seeing him was quite a revelation. He wasn't treating me like a child; no, he'd asked me to paint for him...and I'd looked at him for a long time before telling him it wasn't
possible
I was too young to be a princess, I was aware of that, while he seemed to wait patiently for me to take the plunge. He came every afternoon. Since we were in a time of great political pressure, he had nothing better to do than come and see two little girls like us.
Especially since as soon as I had a vision, I would paint, never in front of him, but I did it. I didn't want anyone to see me paint because I no longer knew who I was when I did it; I was like in a trance, possessed by someone else who knew what they were doing and saw.
"Could I marry you later?"
I don't remember what I answered while I wasn't in my normal state. What I did know was that while I was constantly smiling at this man, that day I turned around in silence, slowly, and stared into his eyes for several minutes. This state prevented me from being happy, but I knew that the depth of my love for him had compelled me to nod. I could never have refused him a televised request, even without his justifications; I saw in his gentle gaze an affection I had never felt myself.
"You are so sweet and pretty. In a world like ours, I'm scared that we can't grow up together." He smiled at me, lying in the grass next to me as I slept in the shade.
I was twelve and a half years old, I had grown a lot...but above all, I had become a woman. I had bled for the first time, at the exact same moment, on the same day as Lorea. There was no doubt that we were connected, but I had felt strange ever since that day, scared and vulnerable, as if my story had just taken a turn toward its climax.
That day I had gone outside to sunbathe because I had a terrible stomachache, and Behean had come to join me while I was fast asleep in the shade of the tree
Behean couldn't stand Lorea, or to put it more simply, he hated her. She was the opposite of me, and he loved me like his treasure, always making sure to come to me when she wasn't there.
"Look at me, Ederra... when you look at me, the world is so much more beautiful."
I held him in my arms like a child would hug their mother in their sleep. It was soft and warm. Behean bit his lip, gazing wearily at the sky.
"How far will the world take us both? Everything terrifies me; if you weren't here, nothing would console me."
I knew it better than anyone. Lately, Lorea had been scolding me for painting nothing but unsellable pictures of one person: Behean. He was everywhere, but always darker.
The ones where I saw him walking away were the ones I tore up with the knives I'd stolen from the kitchen.
Lorea understood my anxieties. When I was almost 13, she told me she had a way to make sure Behean stayed close to me. That he would be loyal to me forever if I gave him to her...
The only way was for him to sleep in my room and for me to carry him inside me as a token of our mutual loyalty.
I didn't understand, so she told me stories about her mother and my father. What creates love and children is this bond, which made me not tell Mom that Dad had cheated on her, this sign of the affair.
"Will he want my love? He told me he wanted to marry me, but I'm afraid he'll want more..."
"Of course he does. It's the most beautiful gift a woman can give a man. It feels good and it promises marriage."
"Oh...really?"
I wasn't very sure of myself, but that night, even though he told me he was feeling dizzy and refused to sleep in my room, I followed him anyway under the pretext of tucking him in.
"Do...do you really want us to get married?" I was trembling and hesitating, afraid he wouldn't want me...he wasn't feeling well, but he answered me anyway:
"Who wouldn't want to marry a girl as pretty as you? I wanted to ask you if..."
He was silent because of the pain, holding his head, and gestured for me to leave with a smile, but I undid the buttons of his dress and let it fall to the floor.
"I want us to be married too...so I'll give it to you now."
He didn't push me away, although it took him a moment to respond to my request. Even though he held it in his arms, it was difficult for him to take possession of my body. It hurt, it tore me apart, but I said nothing. I remained happy that he wanted me as his wife. I was so proud to have been accepted back by the person I loved most in the world.
"Whore! I never told you to do it now!" Lorea shouted harshly.
She poured the glass of water in my face. It wasn't cold because it was only early autumn, but...that water had never felt so icy
"Is it...that bad? I...I did it now but..."
"God will punish you for being an impure creature."
She grabbed me by the collar, cutting off my breath, and fixed my silver eyes with the same deathly expression on her.
"Women should never do that before marriage. You have sinned, you are a sinner! A whore!"
"I didn't do anything, I didn't go to another man, I did everything you told me to!"
"You're lying! I never told you to do such a thing! You misunderstood me! If you would listen to me properly sometimes instead of reading your books that fill your head with nonsense! He will never marry you, never!"
She slapped me brutally, leaving me lying on the floor, soaked with her water and my tears, no longer feeling the pain of her blows but of my own actions
What had I just done? I had no idea. Wasn't it a sign of love? What had I misunderstood in her words? Why... why such a reaction?
My own sister...
She came back to see me in my room an hour later, when my tears had stopped but the wound inside me was still bleeding.
"I'm going to help you. I'm sorry I didn't treat you well... but you'll have to say goodbye to Behean."
"I don't want to!"
"You're no longer worthy of loving him. Think about him for a moment; if you love him so much, you must leave him to a pure girl."