“You are the daughter of our king, you must carry yourself so,” Tauriel twirled the ends of her daughter’s as they sat together in the young princess’s room. “Your adventures with your friends need to end, Taura.”

            The young mermaid flicked her tail in defiance, swimming away from her mother’s touch. Taura took her hair into her own hands, combing through the braid her mother had made letting her hair flow free. “What adventures?”

            Her mother turned to face her child as she swam around her room freely, “Don’t think your father and I don’t know about what you and your friends do when you should be with your mentors. Going beyond our jurisdiction to the Siren’s borders and swimming after humans.”

            Taura rolled her eyes and continued around her room, looking up at sunlight wishing to escape the confines of her palace bedroom. Escape seemed easy. She only needed to swim up and she was free but she knew better then to think that. Her father’s guards would see her and bring her back. “This is the safest place for a princess like you,” They’d say to her.

            “Taura? Do you hear me?” The Queen rose from her seat and swam to her daughter. Grasping the girl by her shoulders, she shook them firmly.

            “I hear you mother, I hear all of you…all the time,” Taura brushed her hands from her shoulder, “You can’t leave the palace. You must have a guard with you at all times. Tell us where you are always. Don’t go wandering beyond our borders. Don’t go to the surface unless told to by a mentor. I get it. You want to keep me prisoner in my own home.”

            “No, that’s not what—“ Tauriel reached out to Taura’s cheek but had her hand swatted away.

            “You can’t keep me in the dark forever.”

            “No…but we can keep you safe,” The Queen hesitantly approached her daughter, letting the ends of her fingers graze her soft cheek, “as long as you listen to me and stay here…at home.”

            Taura lay on the cold floor of her prison cell. Sweat clung to her pale face as her fingers trembled. The air in the damp cellar may have been cold, but her body felt like a furnace. Her legs the fuel to the raging fire.

            Shackles restrained her from moving her arms and legs but even the tiniest movement of the lower half of her body told her moving was not an option. The numbing serum wore off long ago and the pain she’d hope to avoid hit her at every slight shudder and twitch. She did her best to suppress her moans and cries of pain knowing that they would go unnoticed. Taura could hear the other pain-filled cries of the other young girls around her. The cried for help, for their parents, for anyone to come and save them.

            With a blindfold covering her eyes, Taura could not see where she lay but from what her fingers touched, she could feel bars in front of her as thick as her own arms. Sh