As promised, I'm sharing some more writing surrounding my gothic romantasy world! 'Nedine's Night' is a short story that I wrote almost a year ago. I'd like to think that I've improved since then! While this doesn't directly tie into the main plot, Nedine becomes important further down the line. And writing in her perspective helped me to understand her character better for when she is introduced. 

Esme 🩷

The night was still. Too still. Like the attack earlier that year, an ocean breeze entwined with salt and brine seemed to nip at Nedine’s ear, a faint whisper of Sleep. Sleep. But she’d obeyed its urge last time, sinking into a nightmare-ridden sleep that became too true - too vivid when she awoke to Sirens screams and the slice of claws against scales and skin. Never again. So that brine scented wind moved on into the pale dawn, one last cold caress into her ear before she wrapped her nightgown tighter around her lithe form. Sleep rarely found her these days and when she did, it was a flurry of blood soaked memories entangled in a pit of emotion she didn’t care to name. Didn’t dare to. Those blond waves brushed against her face, a soft caress, summoning a flurry of images : a half smile, unseeing stormy eyes that matched her own, a pallid, waxy complexion - 

Nedine’s chest rose and fell in rapid succession. No. Not tonight - not now. In the rippling dark mass of water, a trio of giant seahorses flocked neck-deep, their golden skin stark against the bloodless moon. Their skin was crafted of gilded scales - eyes beady black, not a care in the world as they frolicked, joyous and secure. Watching them, she felt a stone sink to the bottom in her stomach, a stone that had been sinking for an awfully long time. As if sensing her eyes, one of the seahorses looked up - noticing her attention. He inclined its head ; a silent question. He didn’t need to speak and neither did she, to know what he asked and to know what her answer was. Nedine merely shook her head, those damned blond waves refusing to leave her vision. His eyes remained on hers, the other seahorses following his gaze. A chill crept over her bare arms, goosebumps prickling in its wake on her golden skin. It was so unbearably cold compared to the heat of the day. She, nor any other siren liked it, enjoyed it and yet…yet there was something. Something calming in the cold. And the seahorses must have agreed as they cast her one last look before diving into the ice-biting blackness, barely a ripple forming as they became nothing more than golden smudges - and then not even that. Submerging to the ocean’s embrace once more as she’d used to. 

Nedine’s grip on the railings tightened, hands becoming white knuckled against the frigid air - and that distant but ever close shard of memory. The cold was supposed to be a distraction, the heat in her bedroom causing not the desired comfort, but an onslaught of sweat and bunched sheets that too often than not, was followed by screams that sent the Sentries running for her door. But if anything, the cold was just as bad - if not worse. Nedine had the sudden, stupid urge to leap off her balcony and into the churning ocean below and see for herself how frigid the water could really be - if that could keep her from her living nightmares. If it would strip them from her along with her scales and skin until she became another skeleton underneath the sand. And right now with that hole in her chest aching, her body shivering and that unnatural stillness hanging in the air…maybe it would be a relief. Maybe, just maybe - she’d never have to her think again, feel again, just be lulled into the ocean’s embrace once more-

A noise from her bedroom - the sound of a knuckle colliding with a sea glass door. “Princess?” A crisp voice, tinged with an undertone of worry, of caution - usual, in that sense. Zale knocked again, louder this time so that it jolted against Nedine’s senses like the unwanted prickle of stabbing heat. She opened her mouth - closed it, and stepped through the billowing gossamer curtains, instantly met with the red hot heat of stabbing raseurs. 

“Come on,” Zale pleaded, words half muffled through the glass, “you know I have to do this. Open up, Nedine.” Begging, if she’d ever heard it and she’d heard it quite a time. The snivelling, the lowering of self, the disgust…as a Princess it was granted when people wished for favours but…

She opened her mouth, closed it again and stalked to her vanity where a range of dusty objects sat unused. Her coral hairbrush itself was strangely clean of her blonde strands - almost pleading too for her to drag it through her scalp. Pleading - so much pleading, and for what? What was she to do about herself, lest others? They may as well all swim to the bottom of the ocean and implore Cornelius’s headstone. 

“Nedine,” Zale whined and she set the brush down with a snap of her wrist, turning on her heel to the door. The marble floor at least was delightfully cool as she padded over, Zale’s beseeching face coming into clearer view from where he stood behind the green tinted material. There he was - the brunette hair and turquoise eyes, the smattering of freckles across his bronze cheeks. He was so familiar having been her Sentinel for just under a year and yet he may as well be permanently stood behind that shaded door - forever waiting to be let in. His face instantly relaxed when his eyes met hers, shoulders drooping. Nedine became aware of how little she was wearing - her nightgown barely a scrap of seafoam silk that exposed her sun bleached legs and hollowed stomach on full display. Yes, it was Court fashion, but she’d been swathed in her heaviest attire over the last months and going back to her old ways - normal ways - was too soon. Swallowing, she cracked the door open an inch as Zale peeked his head through, barely batting an eye at her attire, instead deigning to zero in on her face intently.                       

“What?” Nedine snapped, the words having less bite than she’d wished them to, all fire, all rage snuffed out, leaving a pile of smouldering embers and weary annoyance. He blinked - just the once - which was an improvement from when she’d stopped using all her protocol all those months ago and the young Sentinel had been as floored as a floundering fish. No niceties or smiles but crisp curtness. She raised a brow, folding her arms from where they leaned against the sandstone wall. “Well?” These words, thankfully, came out less fragmented.

Zale’s blue eyes flashed with a glimmer of hurt and she could almost feel that stir inside her, almost-

“The seahorses reported you to the Sentinels in the Underwater.” He explained slowly, his eyes once again clear as the midday sea. “That they saw you on that balcony ledge, alone and they just thought-” 

“Just thought?” Red rose in her like a wave, blotting all else out. 

Zale straightened as if he’d prepared for this, as if he knew what she was thinking and what she’d say, so she made to close the door and as suspected, he shoved his foot in it. The moonlight sent crests on his golden armour, the shade of the sands behind them where she’d once walked along. “We’re worried about you.” He spoke slowly, carefully, as if to a deranged animal. “You’ve not been yourself. They can see it, I can see it, your Mother can-”

Mother. Mother lounging on her coral throne, not a care in the world but the crown on her head and oysters served to her on a silver plate. Her vision blurred, warping the world into hoarse focus as she placed a steadying hand against the doorframe, fingers curling inward. Zale continued to talk, oblivious, his words a stream of bubbles that refused to reach her ears. “How would you know about her,” Nedine whispered softly. A question - but not quite. Zale’s piercing eyes bore into hers. 

“She cares for you.” Each word was another lock in the box that was her heart, another key to be collected and held within that bottomless expanse, shielded from sight and sound. Nedine couldn’t have replied even if she’d wished to, cared to. “I’m sorry.” It was the only thing she knew how to say as the door softly clicked shut. He didn’t bother to stop her this time and for a moment, his face hovered behind the glass. Hesitating - considering. But then his footsteps sounded, growing distant until disappearing entirely, no silhouette behind the glass but her own. Her shoulders loosened, bracing herself on the rough stone. Her heart quieted its beats until once again, it was silent. It was all silent. 

The salt entwined breeze ruffled Nedine’s eyelids as she sat on the railings as if to welcome her back, brushing her face in sweeping strokes that had her lips parting and head tilting back. This. This was the only thing. She was no Siren, no Princess, no girl but just another piece of the sea and sky and all in between. Nothing and everything. Everything and nothing. Her feet dangled precariously close to edge, the sea seeming to lean in closer, anticipating her fall. But it’d have to wait to swallow her up - a little longer. And as everything fell truly silent so the only thing she could hear were the crashing waves, Nedine opened her mouth fully and began to sing, voice floating out to caress the cool air, the briny breeze - a soundless thank you. And as if the breeze heard it…a coolness wrapped around her once more as it drifted on to foreign lands and unknown shores. The cold was still uncomfortable, still not enough to distract her but it had a strange soothing quality in the shaking of her bones, where one wrack could have her hurtling to the white washed waves. Maybe that was what was soothing about it all. And as that haunting melody rose up into the blanket of onyx, she could have sworn a sharp prickling branded her flesh in ice. That something, somewhere, opened a slumbering eye and set it on her, whether it was a blonde haired Prince or…or something else.

But as that breeze wafted on, cocooned in salt and brine and frost over the rippling waters and under the moonlit sky, closer and closer to that unknown claw prodding its tip into the fabric of the world in the form of churning waves and murdering swells…the breeze wondered if the young princess may just get the distraction she so desperately needed after all.