She stared at the face in the mirror for an immeasurable length of time. Her reflection was as trapped as she was, both bound by gilded cages, always the subject to the will of others.

The face she saw before her devoured the person inside, shadowing her, keeping her imprisoned in the twilight landscape unperceived by others. Her beauty was her curse, her downfall. Instead of seeing her they saw only the face, the body, and instantly desired it. It had brought her nothing but misfortune and sorrow. She wished she could discard her face like a piece of clothing, and wear something plainer, less noticeable. Maybe if she could he would still be alive, still be with her…

Her eyes flickered to a spot over her right shoulder, fixing on the tiny child asleep in the giant canopied bed, swamped by thousands of marks worth of silk and damask, her gold hair just visible. Her poor fatherless baby.

The eyes turned back to stare at themselves. In the flickering lamplight her normally sea-blue eyes turned into dark pools in which too many people had drowned, falling into their hidden depths, desperate to touch, to taste, to possess.

They were outlined in smoky kohl and her blonde lashes, covered with mascara and perfectly curled, rested softly against her pale skin, making her eyes seem even bigger.

They were questioning eyes, wary eyes. Eyes that had seen far too many horrors for someone so young, eyes that had been stripped of almost all their innocence.

The dim light flickered uncertainly in them like moonlight on rippling water, catching the mystery she presented and the intoxicating mixture of strength and vulnerability she possessed.

A stray curl of hair fell from her elaborate chignon to rest lightly against her forehead but she made no move to brush it away, or even to make any sign that she had noticed it at all. Instead her hand crept hesitantly up from her lap, stopping at her throat to fiddle with the delicate gold chain around her neck until she clutched the ring that hung from it, the metal warm from where it had rested against her skin. She raised it to her lips and kissed it and then went back to caressing the band between her fingers.

She pursed her lips, unaware of how the cupid bow lips curved so invitingly, or how the light shone off her bottom lip, covering it with a pearly sheen, similar to the milky pearls dangling from her ears. They had been picked out by Georg, the same as her dress, same as all her clothes, all her jewellery, everything she now ‘owned’. She had wardrobes full of beautiful clothes, all of which she hated. The dress she had had to wear to dinner was everything she didn’t like. It clung to her like a second skin, was cut promiscuously low, with a long slit reaching from the bottom up right up to almost the top of her thigh. She would have felt more comfortable going to dinner in a hemp sack. No matter that the dress cost over five hundred marks and was made from pure white Chinese silk, she still couldn’t feel safe in it.

Georg had tried to take her ring from her but she had turned into a spitting cat and tried to run back upstairs but was hampered by the gown and he had easily caught her. She had spat in his face, desperately trying to shake free, but he knew how to hurt her without leaving visible marks. Every time something like that happened she promised herself that that would be the last time, that finally she’d escape to Russia to begin her search, but each time robbed her of a little more confidence, a little more awareness of self. It made her retreat further into the fortress that she had built around herself, falling deeper into the shadows, sending out a fruitless plea for help. No one ever came. No one ever cared enough about her to take notice.

A slight creak outside her door made her tense and she slowly turned to face it, expecting the worst. It came again and she quickly turned the light down, leaving the room in true darkness. After a long moment footsteps moved away, retreating down the corridor. She breathed a sigh of relief. Standing up she slipped the dress from the shoulders, whipping it off the floor as she stepped out of it, and laying it on the dressing table stool. She pulled on the ostentatious nightdress she had been given and slid into bed next to her daughter. Georg had banned her children from sleeping in the same room as them. Freidrick, slightly older, was able to last most nights by himself but Leyna was far too young and she usually managed to sneak her daughter into her room. She rarely got to play with her children and so sharing a bed was normally the only time that she got to see them.

She cuddled up next to the small body of her daughter and wrapped an arm around Leyna’s warm shoulders, pulling her to lie across her breast. Kissing the top of her daughter’s head lightly she lay back, staring up at the canopied ceiling. Two years, three months and twelve days. Every one as long and as painful as the day before. All she wanted to do was give up, but she had a promise to keep. A promise that was almost impossible to fulfil.

hey, I hope you enjoyed this.

Those who have read The Right Kind Of Treason will know what I've been babbling about but I hope those who haven't enjoyed it all the same.

This is a little bit of the story I want to write about what happens to Bianca after Stefan's death. It won't be written entirely in £rd person like above. I'm planning to have alternate chapters (like TRKOT) whereby one chapter's like the above and the next is from Bianca's or another character's POV.

So...let me know what you think!

Auraya x