Chapter Text
As much as Tomiris wants to go and take Beast’s life as soon as she decides on it, she knows she must wait. What is a few hours compared to the two months she was undercover, to the three years she trained with Silver Wings, to the almost 10 years she hated that Beast?
That doesn’t mean she idly sits in her chamber though. She has too much nervous energy for that. She packs her measly bag with plans of running to the emergency rendezvous point and unpacks them after realising that this will make her an immediate suspect. The palace has pictures of her, they will find and kill her. She will be a rat who betrayed the crown that housed and gave her a job, who was too cowardly to face the consequences in the eyes of the public. If she runs, the crown’s press managers will make her look a deranged villain, a danger to the public, she’s sure.
But after the palace is free of the beast, Tomiris can wait out one more month. She is walking the length of her chamber back and forth thinking of a possible reason Mariam might want to quit. An argument? Could end with her transferred to a different department. A break up? Same problem plus she will need to fake a relationship before that. Shit. What else is there? She can have a relationship on the outside. Her handler from the Silver Wings. Mariam already sends letters to Linetta, a “friend from when she worked in Corona”. It’s not that much of a stretch to believe that their relationship changed and now Mariam wants to go back to Corona, with better money and resume, right? Yes, that will work. It will, it will.
***
After cleaning up her story and her alibi (she will be seen getting a midnight snack and seemingly returning to her chamber), Tomiris feels the usual pre-mission calm wash over her. Thoughts are no longer running in circles in her head. All the details have been smoothed out. There is no more planning, the success depends only on her skill. And Tomiris is confident in that.
She doesn’t have any moral objections to killing a sleeping man. If she did she would remember the crown's invasion of the Hun lands done in the darkest hours of the night.
As the sky outside darkens and quiet descends on the castle, Tomiris begins to set up. First, she gets her weapons ready. The dagger that was dropped off in the city that she picked up on a weekend about three weeks in. With it she сuts the stitches inside of the big backpack she brought as all of Mariam’s belongings. In there is her equipment for emergencies: a black catsuit, made out of protective material similar to what the Auradon army uses and enchanted with a shielding spell, a matching thin black cape, enchanted with a notice-me-not spell. She loves that cape because it’s so easy to transport, it can’t be bigger than a wallet folded. The dagger and the cape go under the pillow for now.
Tomiris changes into the suit and puts her nightgown over that. She unbraids her hair, messes it up a little and tugs on her under eye area a few times to make it look as if she woke up from a too-long nap.
She checks her dagger’s sharpness one last time and straps it to her right thigh. She tugs at the sheets and crumples the duvet to the lower half of the bed. If anyone comes looking for Mariam, they’ll assume she went to the kitchens or the bathroom.
Tomiris looks over to the clock on the wall: twenty to midnight. Perfect. She throws on a robe, stuffs her cape in a pocket and walks out of her room, phone flashlight on, acting half asleep. She is almost out of the maids’ quarters when the door to her right creaks open.
“Who’s there?” A pause. “Mariam, is that you? What are you doing up so late?”
“Hey, Juls,” Tomiris sucks at voices, so she’s whispering, “I guess I fell asleep and missed dinner, so I’m just making a run to the kitchens for a midnight snack.”
“Oh, hon, I’ve got some crackers stored away in my room.” She has a sweet smile, Tomiris notes in that moment. There’s sympathy in her eyes, that is not proportional to the situation, though. “You want them?”
“I couldn’t. I’d have to go to the kitchens either way, I need to get some water.”
“Suit yourself. Ooh, would you mind getting me a bottle?”
This is better than anything Tomiris hoped for. Julie will vouch for her.
“Of course not! I’ll be back in...fifteen?”
“Just knock when you’re back, honey. I went down this rabbit hole of Prince Chadwick’s interviews, I won’t be asleep. He’s so charming!”
***
Tomiris is on the staircase from where ways to the kitchens and to the kingly rooms split up. She walks into a shaded corner to change. The robe and the nightgown come off, the hair is thrown into a tight bun and the cape is on her in less than thirty seconds. Tomiris feels like herself at last.
You can never be too careful with the tracking abilities of a phone so she’s leaving it all here, tucked near the plant pot infamous for being a weed drop off point. She checks the time and starts a mental clock. Nine forty-seven. About three minutes until the guards change shifts.
She walks up the stairs and ducks into the servants corridors. Two and a half minutes. Straight through the corridor, up a flight of stairs. One and a half minutes. Left and she’s there. One minute until the guards change shifts and create enough noise so that the sound of the servants’ door opening won’t be heard.
Tomiris takes her dagger out and looks at her own reflection in the weak light. With the hood on, she can barely see her own face. Tomiris lowers the weapon, feels the carving in the handle. Small geometric pattern, representing ram’s horn. Power, perseverance and life force. So much hunnic wisdom is lost now that they are all being raised in Weian culture.
Her thoughts are interrupted by the faint sound of footsteps. Guard change. Tomiris carefully pushes the door open. There he is. Sleeping on his gigantic four poster bed while the dwarves who probably mined all the precious stones for the lavish decoration barely make the ends meet.
She walks up to his side, careful not to make a sound. (Though she’d have to try, the carpet underneath the bed is so plush, one could probably drop a bowling ball unheard.) She doesn’t have all night. In a fluid and powerful move she raises her dagger and thrusts it in his chest.
It doesn’t go through. It does not fucking go through. Tomiris is sure that she hit the perfect spot between fourth and fifth rib. Her blade is sharp and true. Why the fuck did it not go through? She tries again. It just grazes him.
Before she can try again, she feels a strong hand on her wrist.
“Guards!”, a guttural, angry voice howls.
The double doors open and four men run in. Tomiris tries to move, to run, but the king still possesses beastly strength. She kicks him in the side and twists away. Tomiris goes to stab the guard closest to her and gets him somewhere in the abdomen. Punches another. With the dagger still bloody she aims for the third's eye but only gets his face. She can’t see the fourth one. Where is he? A fist connects with her throat, making all thought fly away.
There’s a harsh and powerful tug at her cape and she loses balance, falls down on her right side, dagger clattering to the ground. There’s the fourth one. She tries to get up but someone puts their knee on her back. They are quick to put her hands behind her back and in cuffs.
***
This is the worst night of her life. She felt so triumphant only twenty minutes ago and now she failed. Oh gods, she failed. What is she going to do? What are they going to do to her? She can’t believe she failed. She can’t believe she went so hard against the plan.
Tomiris is in cuffs, chained to the iron table, her dagger just out of reach in front of her. There are three armed guards lining the back wall. The Beast is the other room, probably with some midnight council.
She is such a loser. Tomiris wanted to save her people but now she’ll be the cause of their demonisation. She’ll be another scary story of why you can’t trust foreigners. Like Jafar (all brown men are power hungry pedophiles) or Regina (all latinas are gold digging witches) or Gothel (all Jewish people are hoarding power and practicing blood libel). She’ll be a caricature of her people. Tomiris (all Huns are savages who are just waiting to kill you under the cover of night). She wants to bang her head on the table.
That won’t be necessary though. Soon her head will roll. That’s the harsh truth, right? She failed and now they are going to kill her. Oh, they are going to torture her and then kill her.
Before she can go any further down this train of thought, the only door in the room opens.
It’s the High Queen, Belle de Villeneuve. She’s beautiful and so neatly put together that one could think she was prepared for this. She doesn’t lose her composure when her eyes catch the dagger, dried blood covering the blade, but something changes in her face when she looks up at Tomiris. Maybe it’s the shock of seeing someone beat up, maybe it’s recognition. Whatever it is, her eyes become unfocused, like she isn’t mentally here.
After a couple of moments, High King Adam follows in, with a man in a suit, some lawyer type. He doesn’t look like he’s there to beat information out of her, he looks like he bumps cocaine on the daily.
“Hello, Mariam,” he talks slowly, “ We aren’t quite sure if that is your real name but it should suffice for the time. Now, I have been made aware by his majesty the High King of your actions.” With a metallic thud, he lowers a briefcase she didn’t notice he was holding.
“We hope you are going to cooperate.” Click. The locks on the briefcase open. “That would be better for all parties involved.” Thud. One half lowers on the table.
“We’ll start with basics. Who do you work for?”
She finally looks him in the eyes. They’re blue, cold but ultimately average. “Like I’d tell you.”
“Well, that was expected. Your Highnesses, as the perpetrator is not cooperating, I will be conducting the interrogation as previously discussed.” The man looks over his shoulders for confirmation.
The Beast has the look of utter concentration, eyes focused on Tomiris, as if he can read her mind. The Queen still looks a little out of it, but both nod.
Lawyer-looking man, her interrogator, reaches inside the briefcase. Instead of knives, needles or other torture devices Tomiris expected, he pulls out a small vial of orange-ish liquid.
“What the fuck is that?” Words tumble out of her mouth before she can control it.
The man ignores her, speaking to the guards instead, instructing them to hold “Mariam” down and push her face upwards. One of them comes up behind her chair and put one hand on her shoulder. With the other, he grabs her underneath the jaw and forces her to look up.
It’s terrifying. She can’t see anything but the ceiling. Tomiris tries to fight, moves her body chaotically, turns her head. There isn’t much she can do, cuffed and held down as she is. To her left she sees the interrogator. “No, wait, what is that? What are you doing?”
With a put upon sigh, the man stops near her. “This is something that the High Queen herself has invented. You will see the effects soon enough.” He looks to the guard holding her head. “Keep her steady.”
The hold tightens. She almost feels like she’s being choked. Something cold drops into her left eye. She tries to blink it out but it’s stuck uncomfortably, covering her eyeball like a wrapper. More of the liquid is being poured around her right eye. The fast blinks don’t let the drops hit their mark. But soon enough a hand reaches down and forcibly opens her eye.
Fuck, it burns. She’s sure she’s crying. Is their first move really to burn off both her eyes? What the shit?!
An unexpected voice speaks up. “Miss Mariam, don’t be absurd. We are not barbarians. This solution will simply make you more pliable to the questioning.” The Queen sounds hoarse, like this is the first time she spoke in a while.
Somewhere between all the movement, the hands holding Tomiris disappeared. So she straightens up. Everything is blurry and unsteady so she just looks in the Queen’s approximate direction.
“I don’t know who drained your empathy, Queen Belle the Kind, but your intelligence means nothing without it.”
The last thing Tomiris hears before she passes out is a small gasp.
***
When she comes to, she’s sitting on the floor of what she assumes is the same room. Except now, she has her cloak on and when she blinks the post black bleariness out of her eyes, she finds her dagger strapped against her leg again, miraculously clean. She makes a move to stand up and falls right back. Her forearms are bound against her back. Her feet are cuffed together so closely, she’d probably fall if she tried to walk.
Tomiris makes an attempt to move again. Anything is better than to be sitting here in the deafening silence. The only sound in the room is her own shallow breathing. But when she tries to push the chair back, make some room for herself, a wave of nausea overcomes her. Something wants to come up. Tomiris instinctively turns to the side so she won’t get vomit on herself. Her stomach is achingly empty and she can only retch that emptiness.
When the nausea lessens (because it doesn’t pass, not completely) she straightens up and notices something move out the corner of her eye. She flinches before realising it is her own reflection. Fuck, she looks awful.
The double braids no longer tight against her head, disheveled beyond recognition. Hair plastered to her face with sweat. Hand marks around her throat. Tear tracks on her cheeks, so many of them, she thinks there must be enough salt dried on her cheeks for a lake. And her eyes. Bloodshot, still with the orange tint, irises blown.
She reminds herself of her neighbour from when they were living in Schwarzwald. They had no choice but to stay in questionable places and the man across from her and her dad was a notorious drug addict. He was fine usually, never bothered them, but one time she found him passed out right in front of his door, no strength left in him to get across the porch. Tomiris took the keys from him and let him inside. He fell on the couch. Trying to help, she brought him a glass of water. He drank it gratefully. When they sat down, she got a better look at him. He was frazzled, shaking a little, sweaty, his eyes were red. Stuttering, he told her that his name was Franz and that he was trying to quit. There are no programs that would accept someone hooked on ambrosia, he said, that shit is too heavily associated with the fae. So he’d gone cold turkey and hoped for the best. She sat with him for a while, that day and everyday before they left. Franz was the one who told her about Silver Wings. (“It’s not like you can grow up neighboring the fae district and not know some secrets, Tomi.”) He was just starting to get a little better when her dad said they had to move. Tomiris didn’t even get to say goodbye.
She never got to say goodbye to anyone she befriended. She won’t get to say goodbye to anyone now. Like Julie. They didn’t know each other that well but they worked together and took their breaks together and Tomiris had a soft spot dangerously close to her heart for Julie.
Tomiris makes a few more attempts at breaking out of the bonds even though she knows it’s meaningless. Soon, she will be killed for high treason against the crown and two of her souls will leave her body. Amin ruhu will no longer power her body. Sulde ruhu, her personality, will return to nature. Only her sunesun ruhu has hopes of reincarnation. She prays it will go to someone who is free, and not get sent to the Isle of the Lost.
She doesn’t know how much time passes before the door opens. Two unidentifiable guards stand on the threshold. The shorter one comes up and kneels next to her chair. He fiddles with her feet cuffs and the chain elongates. He stands up and moves behind her. Tomiris thinks he might soften the bounds on her arms but he doesn’t.
“Stand up, Mariam of the huns,” the other guard barks. He still calls her by the fake name.
***
They guide her through the corridors and up and up the stairs. Just how deep underground were they holding her?
When they finally come to the surface, Tomiris sees the pitch black sky through the windows. It can’t be earlier than three in the morning. That’s the moment alarms begin blaring in her head. If they were going to execute her, wouldn’t they do it the old-fashioned way? On the main square, in front of witnesses? She tries asking the guards but they are all stony faces and silence.
Finally, they stop. The taller guard presses some buttons close to a door that’s identical to others they passed and stands back. Her legs are shaking. She keeps repeating her prayers.
The door swings open to reveal a garage of identical cars belonging to the crown. Holding the door is her interrogator. He is holding a backpack, which Tomiris recognised as her own. He looks her over. Seemingly satisfied with what he’s seeing, he nods. She is so confused. A tiny flame of hope lights up in her chest before she can squash it. Maybe he is one of Silver Wings deep undercover agents. Maybe he will help her. Maybe she will run away and live.
“Hello again, Mariam,” he talks slowly again, but this time there are notes of exhaustion in his voice. “I am here as a representative of the High King Adam de Villeneuve of the United Kingdoms of Auradon.” The warm hope Tomiris had for a second dies. She is left with once again trembling legs and a ringing in her ears. She can barely hear the rest of his speech.
“For your crimes of involvement with the terrorist organisation Silver Wings, murder of Luther Smith, conspiracy against the crown, high treason against the crown and attempted assassination of High King Adam de Villeneuve you are sentenced to,” public execution via guillotine, “banishment on the Isle of the Lost.”