Lady Macbeth

by Ava Reid

I am Queen now, she imagines saying, chin raised in defiance. Her father looks down on her, an indulgent contempt on his face. You are whatever creature I make you. Yet still some nights Roscille prays he will come. She prays he will take her away from this gray, evil place where witches live in chains beneath the floor. She wants to ride through the damp green forests of Breizh and cool her feet in the ice-white waters of the Loire. But then when she stands and brushes off her knees she is angry at herself, for missing the home she was banished from, for mourning the father who tossed her away. Nothing more than a lovely face. A lovely face, and a body that shrinks into the mattress while her husband pries her legs apart and grunts into her ear, This one will be a boy, an heir. He would be wiser to father a son on Senga. At least then his line will not be tainted by her Brezhon blood. But Roscille would not wish this fate on anyone, especially not Senga, whom she has sworn to herself she will protect at any cost, who will not be like Hawise—I promise this. Senga comes to her in the morning with hard bread and cold milk. “It will be over soon,” Senga says, stroking her forehead. “Your husband does not have the vices like some other men. Once you have fathered him a son, he will stop.” It will never be over, she thinks. Even when he is finished, he remains inside her, her brain streaked through with purple and black vapors, the color of the blood on his knee. The wound that...