sylvia summit {district seven} fin

If her chest was not a hollow of stone, her heart would have shattered upon the impact of her husband's death. If ice had not crept up the walls of the cavern carved out by greed's teeth, her heart would have fallen to fragments beneath her daughter's final breath. But a heart cannot exist beneath the shadow of a crown, and the title Queen whispered by trembling lips chases away almost all remnants of love - all but the love for the kingdom built from heinous fingertips. She traded her heart for the crown and she never glanced back.

Perhaps she would have been porcelain if the hunger for power power power had not turned her to stone. It howls like a wolf turned savage by the wilds through every fiber of her being - it is relentless, endless.

She has written a vow into her stone flesh with her own fingernails that no light will dare shine in her darkness, that no heart will dare beat in the icy cavern of her chest.

Darkness clings to her skin - and the dark is held closely to her like an old friend. It slinks through her veins, a black cat in the night. It dances in the great pale pools of her eyes, a treacherous tango. No light, no light, she swore - and Sylvia Summit is not one to break her word.

Stella died -
she blinked.

She blinked upon the sight of the crimson, rolling its toxic kiss across the ground below the ruins Kiena Ward had made of her body. No agony beat against her castles to send them tumbling down. No tears poured from the skies in an empty threat to envelop her ice kingdom in a perilous, seething sea. Only a gaping void, punched through her chest by the same hands that blessed her with power, only this time they were curled into fists. Sympathy for the girl locked in her own dark fantasy reduced to ash sparked within the thick, inky blackness, but nothing more. Not a flame, not a fire - a spark, only to be swallowed by the darkness the moment it unfolded into existence.

She looks just as poised in person as she does in her portrait hung on the wall in the corridor that leads down to the dining room. Her mother once commended her the epitome of elegance, the picture of the upper class. Blonde hair kissed silver by the fleeting years tumbles down her back - each hair brushed in place by careful hands. Silken to satin to velvet gowns like sheets of still, dark water hang from her willowy frame, frozen in a pose that steals away the humanity of her features. She is a statue perched upon her throne; stone, not flesh and bones.

Her face is painted to eternally remain ice and stone. Lips the color of red wine curl up in a cold, shrewd smile that chants silent scorn throughout the atmosphere. Eyes of ice blaze green before her horde of kin, upon whom she lays curses with her glares. Flames tear through the barriers she has built from boulders and roar in her eyes, but anger rarely dares reveal its fangs upon the surface.

She married Atticus Summit for his wealth and prestigious title, two things she already held tightly in her clenched hands. But her outstretched hands trembled for more more more - they always did, they always will - and the ring around her finger promised her more more more. The bells sang and she became Sylvia Summit, a queen with a grander castle and a stronger kingdom.

Children flooded the Summit mansion only a few years after their marriage - Stella, Tarian, Eunice, Belle, Blanche, Cynthia, Shaw, Stanley. With their father drowning in a bottle, she begrudgingly cared for them, often placing them in the care of their great aunt rather than enduring their infuriating noise noise noise.

Eleven years -
she wakes up next to Atticus Summit's cold body.

For a moment that soon escaped her, she felt something beyond the shock that seized her body. No light, no light, she swore; no agony, no tears. Not a flame, not a fire - a spark, only to be swallowed by the darkness the moment it unfolded into existence.

She had never thought those amber seas would sweep him into their claws and fill his lungs with their poison at last. Nights of empty bottles and slurred words had dragged on and on and on for years - she lost count of how many raced past her - and when they slammed shut to an end, the silence was deafening and alien.

But silence and solitude are her old friends; the Queen rules alone.

{ table: zoë }

ALREADY CHOKING ON MY PRIDE
THERE'S NO USE CRYING ABOUT IT
I'M HEADED STRAIGHT FOR THE CASTLE
THEY WANNA MAKE ME THEIR QUEEN