Prologue
“Grandma, where are we going?” Jessie asked, her small voice barely rising over the carriage’s creaks.
Lady Cecile, Dowager Queen of Roulette, didn’t look at her. “Somewhere safe, child.”
“Home is safe.” Jessie smiled as she looked up at her face.
“Sometimes it’s not. There are those who would tear our family apart.”
Jessie blinked. “Like who?”
“People who wear smiles like masks,” Cecile said, glancing out the window. “People with dirt on their hands… and royal blood in their veins.”
The clattering of three ornate, old pots tingled in the silence of the carriage.
Cecile held the pots and with a final look behind as they had left the castle behind, started whispering soft, rhythmic chants into Jessie’s ear. The air inside the carriage grew heavy.
Her hands were growing tough and rhythmic vibrations of the voice were shaping symbols in the air before it all vanished with a screech as the chariot came to a halt.
The driver, overjoyed, leaned in. “My lady, the King! The King is here. The Great King of Roulette himself, we’re saved.”
“No, no, no” Lady Cecile hissed under her breath. “No, we’re not.”
She threw open a pot, grabbed Jessie’s hand, and plunged it in. Jessie screamed. What looked like a pot of glowing jewels was fire beneath the surface.
“Grandma! It burns—!” Jessie protested as flames hugged her hands.
“Be strong. The pain protects you.”
Outside, a deep voice called, “Mother?”
Cecile was frozen.
She can feel the hair on her neck stand in attention, “Son, you are alive, aren’t you?”
“As a matter of factly, I am, and let me guess, you are not happy to see me alive, breathing just fine.”
The Guard swallowed at the exchange.
Jessie tried to pull her hand out, but suddenly a roar in the carriage shivered her to her core.
It was her grandmother who had transformed into a wild beast with her top that of a dragon and lower of that of a stern lioness.
The King stepped forward. “Please, let me see her. What are you doing? She’s my daughter.”
“She is not yours to take,” Lady Cecile snapped. Her voice deepened. Her body began to twist and morph lioness limbs emerging, mane rising, a divine creature awakening.
The King stared in horror. “Mother… what are you doing?”
“You lost the right to ask me that when you betrayed your blood.”
“She’s my only child!” he shouted, stepping toward Jessie.
“Back off!” Lady Cecile leapt, claws slashing through the air. “You don’t get to touch her.”
The King dodged, reached toward the pot. “Jessie, hold on a bit, Daddy would take care of it, child.”
“Dare you touch her!” she roared, tearing into his leg.
He gasped. “Mother, please. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then leave.”
“I won’t!”
With one last desperate move, the King drew a splinter knife and drove it into her chest.
She screamed — a sound that shattered the air.
Jessie watched in stunned silence as her grandmother collapsed, her lioness form dissolving into dust and huge thud dismissed the clouds into a cry.
The King staggered to his knees, blood running down his leg, reaching for his daughter.
“I’m here, Jessie,” he whispered. “I’m here.”
When out of blue, a huge jibe at his neck followed from behind. Cecile bit on the veins of her father and tore the flesh apart. Jessie found herself in the embrace of the castle guard as the two forms of energy seem to disappear in human form.
The look of dead on her Grandmother’s then reformed face, looked more ghostly than ever and scared her.
Her hand still in the yarn burning suddenly left her and the Guard could feel a sudden temperature to ease down. A sudden calmness switching there frowns into peaceful eyebrows glowing in the setting sun.
