Amaranth stands at the council, head bowed as the women around her seem to move in a sort of a dance. A veil is placed over her head and drapes over her pale face, lace fabric tickling her nose. She feels a heavy gold chain being wrapped around her hips and clasped at the back. The dress she is wearing is white and almost see through, draping over her natural curves as a way to accentuate and not conceal. The women soon disperse once they see her fit, and the man standing tallest in the row of men in front of her clears his throat.
"We stand here today in honor as Amaranth Quinton is offered to our God for sacrifice. We honor her for the plentiful harvest and wealth that she will bring families and generations to come." The man, her father, seems to falter slightly as he speaks. Amaranth does not lift her head. She can only hear the hushed murmurs of the crowd around her, the quiet sobs of her mother as she sits behind her father. The kingdom has always been this way. The King's eldest daughter offered when she reached eighteen as a sacrifice to their God in hopes of a bountiful harvest and kind winters. Amaranth knows her brother stands at the door of the throne room, and knows that he's praying over and over as he always does.
Always did. Always has since the day he found out about the sole purpose of his sister. The soul he shared.
"Isaiah." Her father calls, and that same brother is soon standing by her side. She does not raise her head, but she can feel his presence. Feels the soft brush of his fingertips against her lower back. The contrast of cold armor against her warm skin. "If you will." Her father gestures to her, and Isaiah nods before stepping in front of her.
"Lift your head, dear sister." Isaiah speaks softly, and Amaranth does as she's told. As she always has just like her brother. He peels back the veil, and sighs upon the sight of his own tired eyes looking back at him. He pulls the small silver pot from the satchel tied at his waist. He opens it, and Amaranth's eyes quickly flicker to the red soot packed into the pot.
"You will always live on, as the princess of Evergleen and the reason we are still standing strong." He dips his thumb into the soot then drags it across Amaranth's forehead in a symbol of sorts. He then leans in and whispers, "You are stronger than any God we may know. We should worship you and the ancestors that came before you."
Isaiah then closes the lid, wrapping a hand around the back of Amaranth's head and pulling her forehead to his lips in a kiss. Their father clears his throat, and Isaiah turns, bowing before him before he turns on his heels and walks back to his place by the door.
Their mother pushes through the crowd to stop him; however, wrapping him up in an embrace as she sobs into his shoulder. He seems to never break eye contact with his father as he wraps an arm around his mother, holding her close. Knights are marching to her sides, and she gets one last look at her father before the veil is pulled back over her head like a bag over a prisoner. She hears the shriek of her mother and the fight that Isaiah fights to hold her back as the knights grab her arms and turn her around, walking her out of the throne room. Hears the large wooden doors slam close behind them.
Silence. Amaranth has vowed silence.
She is going to be dead soon anyways, and she spent the last eighteen years of her life saying whatever she pleased. She couldn't drink, have sex, or ever leave her room for more than a meal or a bath, so she said whatever she could as it came to mind. It was her form of rebellion. Isaiah snuck into her room at night to play games with her that the other children had taught him, and she told him anything and everything she could. He had always listened with a smile or a laugh. She had to be kept pure, unharmed—fit for a God. Her hair never cut, black, wavy hair brushing the top of her ass as she is led through the courtyard and to the group of horses stationed outside the castle. The knights are not kind or respectful as they grab handfuls of her and haggle her onto the back of a horse.
They mumble amongst themselves as they saddle up, and Amaranth lets her body sag against the back of the knight steering the horse she's sat upon. Watching as the kingdom disappears and her vision is filled with blurs of green.
She is to be taken to a small clearing in the woods not far from the kingdom. In this clearing is a hole sealed with a large rock chiseled with their Kingdom's seal. A large tree with swords stuck at its roots. Behind this rock, and inside this hole, is a large cave where Amaranth will be bound to a much larger rock and left for the God whose name is Perthius. A God of wealth, harvest, anything else that the scholars felt like writing in books upon books that the Kingdom of Evergleen has read and lived by for thousands of years. She turns her head, resting the other cheek against the cold iron of the knight's armor, and she watches as they pass by a large pond. The ducks and creatures that surround it seem to watch them pass, as if they know what will become of Amaranth's fate.
Amaranth assumes that the previous sacrifices have either died of dehydration or wild animals before any God got to them. She thinks of all the skeletons and bones that the laborers her father would hire weeks prior had to clean out to make sure that the cave was as spotless as a cave could be for her arrival. The thought scared her when she was a child. The thought of being left to die, but then she realized that the death wasn't what scared her after all. It was the idea of a man and woman conceiving a child with the sole thought and purpose of killing it. He or she didn't seem right. She was an 'it' to her parents. A bargaining chip. Something that they raised to trade like cattle or sheep for wheat and vegetables.
Although, cattle and sheep were probably given much more freedom. Amaranth would pay her weight in gold to be able to roll around in her own shit like a pig compared to this. The horses halt to a stop, and Amaranth lifts her head to scan the area around them. A clearing just like she remembered seeing as a child. Though it has now come to life with plenty of flowers and weeds. She is once again hoisted off of the horse similar to a sack of potatoes and dropped to her feet. Wrists bound at her hips to the chain that jingles as she walks, or more like is tugged, towards the rock that seems to not have any flowers growing around it. They stop in front of it, and one of the knights pulls a lever, seeming to wake up the large boulder as it groans and rolls to the side. The air that expels itself from the cave is cold and damp, and the veil tickles her nose once more.
The knights on either side of her dig her hands under her armpits again, and lead her into the throat of the cave. She's guessing they expected more of a fight from her. Screaming, kicking, thrashing, but she's grown numb to it all. Had started sleeping soundly nights before she was to be given up.
The way down to the cave is rather steep, and the rocks and pebbles dig into her bare feet as she tries to keep up with the long strides of the tall knights. Knights. She doesn't know their names. Never was supposed to get familiar with them. They were too much of a risk to her purity. Nobody ever realized that the real danger came from any man who would look at a young girl that way. She starts to see the large boulder she is to be chained to come into sight over the horizon. The cave is large, almost so large that she can't believe that it exists under the ground that they were walking on moments prior.
The knights seem to walk with more haste now, practically dragging her forward the rest of the way until spinning her around and (as gently as they see fit) propping her against the boulder. She watches as they move around her similar to the women earlier, chains wrapping around her in a coordination that she only ever saw in the castle's ballroom. Most of the chains are snapped into place on the chain around her hip. A thick gold chain that is such a waste to be used on a dead woman walking, but as she looks around she realizes that's probably how her father paid the men that cleaned out the cave.
"Your highness." A knight finally speaks, and she snaps her head up towards him. "We would just like to thank you—for this." He looks around him, and he seems much kinder than the others. Which isn't saying much, but she notices that his hands are shaking as he attaches the final chain to her midsection. "It's because of you that my family will get to eat."
Silence.
"Come on, Brackett." A much older knight calls, and Brackett as he's called, takes a deep bow in front of Amaranth before turning to catch up with his peers. Amaranth watches as the knights walk back up the throat of the cave, silhouettes disappearing in the distant light. She hears the groan of the stone as it wheels back into place, shutting her off in almost complete darkness if it wasn't for the small opening at the top that basks her in light. The princess continues to stare up at the opening, wondering when this God may show up. Maybe her father made an appointment with him beforehand? She never really read much into the planning for this sort of thing. There's a steady drop of water to her left, and she realizes that she can kind of relax her body, slumping forward slightly and letting the chains carry her weight for her.
She thinks about what Isaiah and her mother may be doing. Isaiah is probably still consoling her grieving mother as her father continues to run the kingdom as usual. Amaranth likes to think that her father distanced himself from her in an attempt to protect himself. That he was always so cold and unforgiving towards her because he did not want to feel the grief and sorrow that came with sacrificing your own child to a god he had never even seen with his own eyes. Thinking of it all makes her realize how tired she is regardless of what great sleep she had gotten the past couple of nights. She closes her eyes, focusing on the pain of the chains digging into her skin as she continues to slump forward, and the pain is what eventually pulls her into a deep sleep. The last thing she sees being her feet as they dig into the loose dirt through the lace of her veil.