Hello everyone! I am participating in Brenda Drake's contest where we are supposed to post our first 250 words and people try to guess the character's age and see if the voice matches the age. Thank you everyone for any and all comments, and without further ado, here's my entry:
Please, guess away, and good luck to all contestants!
The two initiates gawked at me as one would at a gutted animal dying in a corner — with equal parts revulsion and pity. Both girls wore their hair pulled back, exposing the swirling gold tattoos at their temples that flaunted their standing as Nobles of Hel’s Court. The blonde one met my eyes and sneered – delicately, of course, nothing more than a curl of her lip.
I arched an eyebrow, daring her to give breath to the word lurking behind her teeth.
Come on, say it. Say it to my face, you little brat.
Bastard. The word everyone thought but never said. The word I’d been reading in everyone’s eyes since I was five, that shone through despite their graceful manners and false smiles.
The blonde, proving she did have some sense, dropped her gaze and turned to her companion. And yet I could still hear the unspoken words like a whisper scuttling through the dark corners of the Sanctuary’s antechamber.
The Stark bastard.
The wooden door tucked in the corner, invisible if one didn’t know where to look, opened. The attendant who’d been ushering initiates since early morning stalked out. He glanced at the scroll containing the list of all those who’d scheduled their Pledges for today. His icy gaze raked over us from under his thick glasses.
“Liese kerrah Mayre?”
The blonde sprang to her feet, grace forgotten in the wake of excitement. Of course she was a Mayre. I thought I recognized that particular shade of blonde and patronizing disdain.
Please, guess away, and good luck to all contestants!
