My Aristotelian Hero: Delilah - Ellora Sutton

Delilah was three things. Thirdly, she was a princess, a second born child; she had an older brother whom she had never known. Secondly, by virtue of being the second child and first daughter, she was a nun; it was a tradition in the royal family from which she was born that the first daughter born would be sent to the Convent of the Sisterhood. Firstly, she was in love. He was a young man, a few years older than herself, and he climbed in through her bedroom window at the Convent every night just to see her, to hold her face in his hands like it was the moon, and in those moments she worshipped a god other than the one in her Bible. He told her his name - by some wicked sense of humour - was Samson. And she believed him. He promised her, with his wide tangerine eyes and voice like smoke, that they would one day elope. And she believed him.

The only member of her family that Delilah was allowed contact with was her mother, a river of a woman always dressed in sin red. One day she came to Delilah, telling her in a flutter that her father, the king, was near to death and was thus to be transferred to the Convent for palliative nursing. Along with him would come the prince, the brother that Delilah had never met. The queen told her that he was an awful man that had yet to grow out of being a boy; a man who took on alcohol like a sinking ship takes on water, a man who gambled money like it was dust, a man who snuck out at night, every night to various houses of sin. He would ruin the nation, she said, if were allowed to come into power. And Delilah believed her. The queen gave Delilah strict instructions of what she should do; she was to sneak into the prince’s room that very evening and kill him. This would leave Delilah the only heir to the throne, placing the nation in much safer hands; it was Delilah’s holy duty, the queen had said. And Delilah believed her.

That night, having fortified herself with prayer and lamb’s-blood tears, she went to the royal chambers of the Convent. The door was unlocked and it whisper-screamed as she creaked it open. The room was as black as the pupil’s of a dead man’s eyes, but Delilah knew the way to the bed, guided by the soft lulling snores of the sleeping prince, her sleeping brother. She stood at the foot of his bed, dagger in hand, and paused. She didn’t want to do it, she wasn’t sure she could, but her mother had told her to and the Bible said it was a sin to disrespect or disobey one’s parents. And Delilah believed it. So she plunged the dagger into the coffin of her brother’s chest. There was no sound. She pulled open the curtain to look upon the face of her sin, and her heart ruptured. For there he was, her Samson, her lover, her brother, her prince, all one in the same. When she hit the ground, her cheeks matched the death-grey of her brother’s, her lover’s.

The king died that night, smothered by his queen who found it all too easy to place the blame on her daughter, saying she had gone mad with jealousy at the life her family got to lead whilst she herself was trapped in a convent. The queen was crowned sole ruler the next day, with a ruby in her crown the same colour as her children’s blood.