The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth
-african proverb

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- Crescentia -

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After my brother had rushed after my father like a dependent puppy and my mother was once again in a secret one-on-one conversation with her dearest daughter, I secretly stole away.

It wouldn't be as if anyone had paid much attention to me anyway. Which made my plan a lot easier.

Finally, the time had come. Finally, after all the years of waiting and planning. My heart was beating so hard that it threatened to burst out of my chest.

In the basement of the castle, I hurried to the end of the hallway, turned once more, and then with difficulty pushed aside the heavy, completely inconspicuous cabinet standing against the wall.

I looked around once more for safety's sake before firmly pressing one of the uneven bricks.

With a soft click, the brick clicked into place, triggering the mechanism that caused a section of the stone wall the size of a door to reset and slide aside.

I refrained from pushing the cabinet halfway forward again and entered the dark, small room. I lit one of the torches from the walls and flipped the lever that closed the stone door behind me again.

Only briefly I looked around the room with its wealth of gold and jewelry. All that was just camouflage. The place where you would least suspect a secret switch for a hidden room would probably be in a hidden room itself.

So I pushed aside the round, red carpet in the middle of the room. The hatch was barely visible, so perfectly had it been carved into the floor. I pressed on an uneven part of the floor, whereupon the handle emerged from the hatch.

Finally I was able to open it, put the torch in my mouth and began to climb down the ladder. Then I ran along the damp passage, at the end of which I had only to operate a mechanism once more to make the rocky stone wall in front of me open.

Then I looked into a pair of icy eyes through the narrow gap of the iron helmet he wore.

At my sight he removed his head armor and showed me his bitter face with its thin lips and long scar above his right eyebrow.

"You did well," he praised me, stepping closer and pressing his lips to mine.

I didn't need praise. I didn't need a damn well done, like I was a kid and like this was even remotely challenging for me. The only thing I needed right now was his soldiers in Spero.

I put my free hand on his shoulders and returned the kiss while trying my best to give myself to him completely. Adding a passionate touch that made me pine for him.

The other soldiers waited silently until their king finished and disengaged from me.

I suppressed the urge to wipe away his disgusting saliva and gasp for fresh air to expel his foul breath from my mouth.

"The queen is in her room. The king in the meeting room," I reported instead. It wasn't as if I needed to describe the location of these two rooms. He knew every corner of the castle because I had told him about it and shown him maps.

The man nodded and put his helmet back on. "Wait here, Crescentia." Then he signaled his soldiers to follow him and marched off.

I wondered how the troops were doing, which were supposed to distract the soldiers from Spero outside. Staring at the blazing torch in my right hand, I thought of all the burning parts of the village and castle garden and front yard.

For a few more seconds I waited motionless until all the soldiers were out of sight. Then, grinning, I wiped Cepha's saliva from my lips and suppressed a loud laugh.

Everything had just gone exactly perfect. Even the things I hadn't planned had turned out the right way.

Like that one night eight years ago when Tenebris was not yet ruled by Cephas. When all the kingdoms had still been allied and united and there had been no wars among themselves.

I remembered the first time I met Cephas. It was a ball in Tenebris. All the royal families of all the kingdoms had always been invited to it. At that time, the goal was still to make contacts and gain allies for trade or other advantages.

So, of course, we had been there too. While my parents had always been busy introducing Darius to everyone like a boy wonder and integrating the future king into social life, Victorine had constantly snuck off to fight with the boys or practice archery with them.

So my mother constantly dragged me, her ten-year-old daughter, left alone by her sister in a huge room full of strangers, everywhere. And I was always standing somewhere where I didn't belong. Where I was seen as a burden.

And at some point I also slipped away.

That's how I ended up meeting Cephas on some secluded balcony, sitting on the floor with my knees drawn up to my chest.

"What are you doing here?" he had asked coldly upon entering the balcony, ignoring me when no answer came, and then silently propped himself up with his arms on the balcony railing. Looking back, I realised that Cephas had not been interested in my reason of being there. He was rather annoyed that he wasn't alone.

When, for some reason, I had begun to cry softly, and he had simply continued to look down on the village. At some point, he had then turned to me. "Stop crying. You'll never accomplish anything in life with tears, Crescentia."

Of course, I had looked up at him in wonder and asked him how he knew my name.

"That's the strange thing. I am future king, yet I am supposed to know everyone else's names. Yet everyone should know my name. Even little, insignificant brats like you."

Wordlessly, I had looked into his ice-blue eyes and, even at my young age, had been able to glimpse blazing anger in them.

"When I am finally king," he continued, turning his gaze back to the village, "everything will be different. Then everyone will know him. And they will tremble with fear when they hear the name Cephas."

A few minutes of silence had passed. "Being king must be great," I finally spoke my thoughts. Everyone paid attention to one. You were important. You could rule over everything and everyone.

"You can be a queen too," he suddenly replied seriously.

At that, I had frowned. "How?"

"Just you wait." With these last words, he left the balcony and disappeared inside the castle.

And barely a year later, Cephas had murdered his parents.

Of course, I hadn't found out about it directly. I had heard it from whispering chambermaids and clerks. That the royal couple of Tenebris was dead seemed to have been a fact. The murder by their son had been a rumor to them.

But not to me. I knew that he had done it to become king. At first I had detested him for it. But with all the following years I had been able to understand him more and more.

That being on the throne was the only way to get others to pay attention to you. There was only one seat in the throne room. And if you didn't sit on that, but stood in the hall, you were nothing and meant nothing.

At first I had only wanted the throne of Spero. But fate had played other possibilities into my hands.

One evening, four years ago, I had been in the empty castle library, as I did almost every day. I had read books and looked around bored in every corner of the huge, two-story and winding room. Until one day I had discovered a secret passage by turning one of the wall candlesticks once completely around.

Apparently it was a room that had remained undiscovered for many, many years. The air in it had been thick to the point of suffocation, and dust the width of a finger was everywhere. On the books, the tables, the shelves, the cauldron, the bottles and the countless containers.

Clearly a witch had once dwelled here. And that had scared me so much that I had left and not returned there for weeks.

Until my curiosity had driven me there again.

For a year I had read myself into the books. Studied the leftover supplies and ingredients. And then I had been able to create a portal to Cephas.

Of course, not the way the witches could normally do it and as it had been written in the books. But by a special mixture in the cauldron, which I could mix from the remaining ingredients.

For three years Cephas and I had met. He had been the only one I could talk to. To whom I could tell how much I hated my life and my parents. That I was invisible and senseless every day. In front of him, I had always been able to be more myself than in front of anyone else.

There was no denying that I kind of liked Cephas. But I liked the possibility of ascending his throne even more. Why rule over the third most powerful kingdom of Spero when I could rule over the most powerful and therefore the entire country?

All these circumstances, all these individual events had led to a path. I did not believe that all these should have been mere coincidences. It was fate. Fate determined that I should be queen.

My skin tingled at the thought of it. This sudden sensation brought me back from deep reveling in my memories and I became more clearly aware of my present surroundings.

Victorine's eyes had probably gone wider the more insight I had given her into my mind. She stared at me as she took a step back. I thought I could see her trying to process all the new information in her head.

"You murdered them," she whispered with her eyes fixed on the floor. Like she just couldn't look me in the eye anymore.

I hadn't killed them directly. I had had them murdered. But I didn't have time for that now.

"They deserved it, Victorine. Just like you and Darius deserved it. So be glad you got away with your lives," I reminded her.

My sister seemed at a loss for words. I waited a few seconds before speaking up again. "I would have loved to have wiped out the entire hypocritical family, and I still would. But I can appreciate that you came all this way to free me. So you may go."

"Deidamia died on all this way." Victorine now looked directly at me again. Grief, anger, and pain swirled in her eyes.

"The pet you were more concerned with than your own sister?"

My question echoed cuttingly and unanswered through the icy throne room.

"Good."

"That's enough," a deep, masculine voice interjected. A brown-haired man appeared behind Victorine, his green eyes shooting angry, poisonous sparks. But more importantly, he had an arrow cocked in a bow and pointed it right at me.

That damned bastard must have really tampered with the wall decoration of my castle. He was aiming my own weapon at me.

My right hand twitched. But if I paralyzed the man, he might still let go of the cocked arrow, which could then pierce me.

But unexpectedly, someone put himself between us and took me out of the line of fire.

"Nicolas, no," Victorine spoke as I stared at her body protecting me.

"What the hell are you doing?" the man snapped at her in an angry and impatient voice.

"She's my sister," she said, as if that were a plausible answer to his question.

"No. She's a traitor."

'Nicolas'? Only now did I see through the disguise and it dawned on me that this was King Nicolas from Sanguis. I didn't know what the second most powerful man in the land was doing here with my insignificant sister and how they had allied, but everyone knew that Nicolas wanted Cephas dead.

And I could somehow turn that to my advantage. Because I wanted his death too. It just had to happen at the right moment.

Cephas had no family. Thus, his partner had the possibility to ascend the throne.

But first the heart had to be activated. So that I ruled not only over Tenebris, but also over unstoppable armies. Armies where the victims didn't matter because you could create new ones in the same breath of their death.

At that moment, the sound of clattering armor and a few men's voices could be heard. Several guards seemed to have become aware of something, as the volume of their rapid footsteps steadily increased and they were clearly rushing toward the throne room where we stood.

On the one hand, it was fitting that they disturbed us. I wasn't sure if Victorine would really continue to protect me from the deadly arrow in Nicolas' cocked bow.

On the other hand, I couldn't make any more deals with Nicolas. After all, there was no way I could kill Cephas myself. It was too risky in case this somehow came to light. But if Nicolas' would kill him for me, I could promise him to make peace with his kingdom of Sanguis. He could kill Cephas and I would smuggle him out of Tenebris.

But the possibility evaporated when Nicolas whirled around to the entrance and released the cocked arrow. It found its way through the narrow, vacant gap in the helmet of the first guard to enter the room. For two seconds he stood stock-still with the arrow in his face before toppling backwards and falling to the floor. His sword fell from his hand and slid a few feet across the slick floor in our direction.

Without further hesitation, I took advantage of the situation to turn and run away. I used the back door of the hall, locked it behind me and ran along the long, unlit corridor until its darkness shrouded me and finally swallowed me completely.