Malice Maze

Chapter 7
Melody’s Mind

Melody heard the voice of one of the girls crying out for her to stop, to not be so hasty, but she would not stop, she would not wait for them. While the two women bickered and squabbled she had taken that introduction of time into her own hands and used it to start off alone, like the Enchanter had told her to do. She would not waste a minute in this maze if she did not have to. There was an escape; all she had to do was keep going left.

She ran until running began to ache, and then she walked swiftly until her feet began to swell, and then she sort of limped until her whole body screamed at her to just stop and rest. She lost all sense of time. There was no way she had been down here for hours, yet her body argued with her and told her it truly was hours; that she had been traveling to the left for longer than Melody had ever moved for a convoluted space of time. Melody looked down the next left handed corridor and took a deep breath. She was exhausted and ready to quit moving but if she stopped she would be her own hindrance. She had to be the first out of the maze or her father would never forgive her. If she was not the first out of the maze she might as well be the one who does not survive. Despite her image of grandeur and her haughty attitude Melody knew perfectly well she was expendable to her father in the name of power and the kingdom. Sadly, he loved her best, and was only slightly hesitant when bargaining with her life. When it came to her sisters she knew that if any one of them had been a virgin he would not have hesitated to throw them away instead. Mathias had planned to use Melody’s innocence against the prince’s and nobles of neighboring kingdoms; instead he was forced to give her to the maze. Of course he wanted her to come out unharmed; he still needed her for his plans. If she came out even slightly sullied she would have been a waste of his wife’s good hips, which had widened with every perfect daughter.

“Melody, I need more power,” he always told her. His wife had died of some sort of blood poisoning shortly after Melody had been born and Mathias was on the verge of a breakdown. He needed someone else to give him beautiful daughters; it would give him more power, more bargaining chips. He had been bargaining with every noble and royal since his first daughter had been born, and the eldest, Jocelyn, had been married off at the age of twelve to a thirty-year-old king who had no idea what he was actually losing by marrying the young beauty. No, every daughter had been given to someone, something. He even planned to make a daughter a priestess, except that the one he had tried to make a priestess had done what she could to lose her virginity before sent to the shrine. He would not make Melody a priestess and so now he was at a loss, still looking for a wife to bare him more children.

“Father doesn’t realize that someone will betray him one day,” Melody mumbled to herself, limping down the halls. “He does not understand that one of these kings will one day grow tired of his manipulations and have him killed, just like they had my mother killed.”

Melody did not mind being a pawn for her father; in fact she looked forward to it. She was to seduce the men of their own nobility, the men closest to her father, so she would learn their secrets… and turn them against one another. Like a geisha he would sell off her virginity to the highest bidder, turning the men against one another in the bid for a woman. Wives would become bitter, friends would grow angry, and Melody’s first act to bring down the enemies of her father would begin. Afterwards it would all be a ploy to win the men’s favor, make it seem she was hard-to-get and then lie down with them, pleasuring their bodies until not only the seed, but the secrets, spilled from them.

Melody continued forward, her body aching, her thoughts racing. Yes, she would return to her lovely room, her perfect view of the meadows, and her promise to be the greatest noble seductress. She just had to escape the maze.

Melody turned left.