Chapter 8

Journal Entry 4: Too early Sunday morning

After my last entry, I tried to sleep, but kept thinking about my past and was unable to shut my mind off. So, I decided to just get up and write some more, hopefully tiring me out where I can get some sleep.

The Prince, in a way to make things right, after my kidnapping and torture, had me medically treated. Being so young, the time I spent recovery flew by far too quickly.

During said recovery and treatment, I was moved out of the dungeon holding cell and into one of the guest room suites that wasn’t being used.

While I was recovering, the Prince came to my room. There, he told me that I didn’t need to just stay within my suite. That, I was to be welcome, like family, to all of the property grounds and rooms, unless security deems it unnecessary for you to proceed past, which locations are few.

Before he got up to leave, I remember asking if I could ask upon him a huge favor. Sitting back down and making himself comfortable again, he waved his hand, as if for me to proceed. I remember thinking that gesture was funny and had to stifle a laugh.

If I was to be as welcomed as family, I wanted to be educated properly. I wanted to know how to defend myself. That I wanted to be trained by the best experts in all different masteries of fighting. Knowledge of weapons and weapon crafting. And that I would like to be educated into his dealings, so that I can better assist him and his family. That I pledged myself to his family’s care and wellbeing until you or your family see fit to release me from service. I ask not for any payment. I made my request while prostrated before him.

I never looked up until I heard the suite room door close. I had thought for the longest time, that I had offended the Prince.

For the next 15 years, I was granted my every wish and desire. I was given a physical education to condition my body into the sculptured warrior that I classify myself as. Like a real-life version of the Amazonians of the fabled Wonder Woman Comics. My trainers determined that I was ambidextrous, ambipedal as well as having joint hypermobility (AKA, able to use both hands and feet equally, no true dominate limb and being fully double-jointed all over) A mind like a steel trap. Everything I read, was told and taught, all permanently recorded. The one odd thing that I never had to be schooled in, was how to communicate in every language that could be tested for. Able to speak, read and write in all languages. That skill, enhanced with interrogation tactics, reading one’s body language along with my enhanced senses, proved invaluable to my Prince’s benefit. Helping him negotiate deals, determine when someone was lying and how to extract information from individuals, willing and unwilling. Some of the guards came to nickname me “Poly”, short for polygraph, because I was so good. Which later became a handle over the communication network within the Prince’s security detail. I know not if there is a firearm made, that I cannot operate. Learned out to handcraft makeshift firearms if need be, craft ammunition, create explosives, gases and poisons.

Poisons, that was the one field I failed in, mithridatism. I had at one point requested to try self-administering poisons for detection or poison tasting, so that I would be able to determine if some food or drink might be tainted, that would affect my Prince and his family. Alas, it was not something I was able to master and therefore gave up on.

Nicely put, I have a very large assortment of weapons at my disposal and like the guard detail around my Prince, I am fully armed at all times.

I remember, my Prince, once referred to me as “Deadly Nightshade.”

I had asked that he never call me that. That, in doing so would tip people off to my skill. I instead requested, “Peace Lily” which got shortened to just “Lily”.