Chapter 1: the scapegoat

As I sat in my chambers watching my maids attend to me and prepare me for my wedding, I couldn’t think of anything more than how this didn’t feel real.

My mind began to drift to my past and I couldn’t help but recall my childhood on a day like this.

Every princess has her fairy tale life but mine had never been like that. My mother, a mage who disguised herself as a maid and began working at the palace to hide her identity fell in love with my father, the king, who had just had a child with his bride from a foreign kingdom. Thus, I was the result of a forbidden affair, something of shame, a bastard child scorned and kept away from my half-sister Kaelara who hated me and the Queen, Dorian who hated me even more.

My mother had powers, powers that would bring harm to her if they were ever found and to make things worse, at the time I was born, there was an increase in the demand for mages. Everyone wanted their blood and their magical abilities, even the shifters wanted them, especially the Dragon Kingdom.

King Morgoth, the king of dragons, a monger of war who spilt blood everywhere he went was in desperate search of a mage whose blood he would use to heal his queen who was sick and dying from the plague that affected the dragon species. The news of a mage living in my father’s kingdom, Eldoria spread like wildfire among the dragon folk of Maelstrom and their king sent a convoy to my father to ask him to bring the mage in his kingdom to them or he would not spare any man, woman or child until he found what he was searching for. My father, Kael, refused claiming there was no mage in his kingdom talk less of his palace and just to be sure, he made the knights set out to find anyone that could be hiding, unknown to him, it was his mistress, my mother, the maid he had an affair with, hiding right under his nose.

After a while, the dragon king became unconvinced and came to a conclusion, the mage couldn’t be anyone other than the Queen, otherwise, there’d be no other reason why he’d want to hide the mage from him. He sent yet another convoy to my father asking him to bring the queen so he might use her blood but this enraged my father who declared war on the Dragon species.

In order to ensure the Queen would survive the war, she was disguised as a maid and taken away with my sister to a safe place to hide. Even now I can still remember the conversation between the king, the queen and his advisors that I overheard when it was sure a war would happen.

I was walking along the palace halls to give my mother her lunch as she had been working at the stables all day when I approached a slightly open door, it was the meeting room, and I recognized it. I then heard the voice of the king’s advisors.

“My King, they’re going to take the queen and there’s no way we can avoid that” one of them said after which there was a deafening silence.

“I have an idea,” the queen’s voice said

“Why not switch my position with someone else?”

“Your majesty?” Another advisor asked.

“You can simply send Kaelara and me away to a cottage guarded with knights while I pretend to be a maid while you replace me with a maid that looks like me”

“Dorian!” My father’s voice resounded. It seemed as if he had already known what she was about to say, like she was waiting for the right moment, as if this wasn’t the first time she had thought of it.

“I know just the right person for this position too…. Marcille”

The food basket in my hands fell as I heard my mother’s name, surely they didn’t mean my mother would replace the queen? Maybe it was another Marcille. I stood frozen, taking in the weight of what I had just overheard, my mother was going to die if the dragon king got a hold of her, even worse, she was a mage, exactly what he was looking for. I searched my hands looking for what I could do to stop this but there wasn’t anything in my power that could save my mother, I was just an eight year old girl whose job was to run errands in the palace while being scorned by everyone for being the king’s bastard child. I briefly touched my hair as I began to pack up the food and meet my mother. Whenever I’d walk among the staff in the palace, I would be reminded of my place. Everyone would glare at me and stab daggers at me. It didn’t help that I inherited my father’s silvery pink hair, the regal hair colour of my kingdom bestowed to the first king by the goddess of the moon and passed down to everyone of royal blood. People would look at me as if I was an anomaly, I didn’t choose to be born under these circumstances and despite everything, I still loved my mother.

As I approached where she was milking a cow at the stables, I began to run as I caught sight of her.

“Mother! Your lunch!” I said running towards her

“My dear Astra” she said smiling as she was cleaning her hands on her dress before she then collected the basket from me. We walked to the river side where we both sat by the water and watched the fish as she ate.

The words I had just heard still plagued my mind and I was torn between telling her and ruining the peace of this moment or just letting things stay like this.

Finally, I broke my silence.

“Mother, the Queen and the king… I overheard them speaking in the meeting room about the Dragon war happening soon and..”

I was cut short by my mother’s words. She waved her hand over my face and sighed as she dropped her sandwich.

“My child, that is not for you to worry about”

“But mother! They’re going to take you away!” I protested tugging the hem of her dress in desperation.

“I will never leave you, Astra, I won’t abandon you!”

“But they’ll take you away!” I screamed as I began to cry.

My mother held me as I wept uncontrollably, maybe it was the fear of me being left alone in this scary palace or the fact that she seemed to have already known what was going to happen to her, either way, I was shaken with fear and I didn’t know what to do, all I could do was cry.