Step One: Marry the Prince.

Step Two: Murder the King and Queen.

I wasn’t prepared at all for Step Three

There are three steps that I must complete to obtain absolute power. The wise woman has told me so already.

I have already consumed the potion. Dark blue, swirling with misty grey and whites and frothing over the top. Tasting like rotting frogs, mouldy river beds and grass that is long over due a cut. It smells little better, smelling of the sweet scent of rotting flesh. But I told myself that it was for a good cause, for the greater good. I pinch my nose, and I swallow the potion in one gulp, feeling it hit my innards with an icy jolt, as I try not to throw my guts up.

Only then does the wise woman give me the warning.

There are three steps that need to be completed, but no one has ever completed the third.

She tells me of Step 1 and Step 2, but Step 3 is to remain a mystery. She says I will know, the wry smile about her features makes me feel uneasy and I wonder momentarily if I have done the right thing.

But that doubt is a weak woman's game and I am no weak woman.

Step 1. Marry the Prince. That step was easy enough. It was easy enough to lure the dimwitted fool into my bed, easy enough to lure him into my chambers and seduce him. It was easy enough to ply his drink with the elixir that would see that he could not live without me. And, just like that ... the fool proposed and made me his bride.

Step 2. Murder the King and Queen. I have never been one for daggers and implements, why use such a tool when there are others more malevolent at hand? I chose, instead, a poison - undetectable to the naked eye and nothing any autopsy would pick up. Not until it was too late.

The Queen is dead they proclaimed, as she breathed her last breath on that fateful morning. How I consoled my husband and my father-in-law, all the while biding my time and watching as my plan fell into place.

The King followed not long after. A broken heart, they said, a heart that could not bear to be parted from his lover. But I knew better, his heart stopping from the poison that I had laced his drinks with, as I tended to him on those evenings as he lay weeping and grieving for his bride.

Step 3. The Unknown task. The task that I had guessed upon, perhaps to kill the prince and take the throne for myself? Or perhaps to bare his child, an inconvenience but nothing that I could not deal with.

I had not felt the tightening of my flesh, as though my body was contorting. I had not noticed the greying of my hair, or the subtle ache in my joints. Not until I returned to my chambers and looked upon the old hag staring back at me. Wrinkled skin, long, gnarled nails, hair greying and falling about her shoulders. Sunken eyes and yellowing skin as she seemed to age before my very eyes.

I raised a hand, and she too raised a hand as with a dawning horror I realised who looked back at me.

The scream that escaped my lips was not human, as I clutched at my chest, attempting to claw away the flesh of the wise old woman.

And only then did I hear the cackling of the wise woman, the woman who had sent me on this path.

"Absolute power, my dear ..." as she thrust her wooden, staff at me "... it comes with a cost, beat death, my dear child and you will know absolute power."

Now I understood why no one had completed Step 3.

Now I understand what she meant when she asked are you willing to lose everything for absolute power.

I had not thought that she would mean my own life.