Prologue
INKERI RAN to her child's nursery, her feet slappimg against the cobblestone flooring of the palace. The torches lining the walls gave the hall a faint light that cause shivers to tun up Inkeri's spine. Someone had warned her and she only hoped it wasn't too late.
The sound of her footsteps echoed around the empty halls of the west wing. The hall of the bastard children. Inkeri had been furious when she was told her child was being moved to the west hall. As the queen, her child was no bastatf, much less a peasant born bastard.
'Wait until I send word to my kingdom,' thought the Virire princess and Sarguis queen bitterly. 'How dare that good for nothing king label our child a bastard.'
Inkeri froze in shock once she reached her child's current room. The room had been ransacked. Her crib was broken, the once beautiful dark wood was now stakes with yellow points, all the baby's clothing was thrown on the floor, many of the pieces torn.
"My apologies your majesty, but you cannot be in here," comanded the soldier that stayed in the child's room to guard her. The soldier who let my childa room be destroyed.
"What do you mean I can't be in here?" Hissed inkeri. "In my child's room?'
"Your majesty, the king has prohibited you from seeing the babe. She has been taken away for our safety as a country." The soldier responded without blinking an eye. Not a tint of remorse or worry in his tone for the princess of the country. The heir of the goddamn country.
"Who let him decide what happens to my child?" She seethed.
The soldier looked at her for the first time ince she walked into the room and responded, "He is the king."
Turning around Inkeri ran to her chambers across the palace and she knelt and she screamed. She kept screaming for hours until her voice gave up on her too. Once she couldn’t scream she cried, and she scratched, and she pulled, and she tore until her hands were scratched and bloodied.
She felt as if her muscles carried the kingdom and could not be rested. Her child. Her poor innocent baby was gone. She couldn’t see her, couldn’t touch her, she couldn’t raise her. Inkeri felt useless. She felt powerless.
Her eyes looked without seeing, her mouth ate without tasting, she touched without feeling. Inkeri had been destroyed. She had been stripped of her family, of her child, of her love, and her hope. But now, she would return the favor. She would see her child again. When she did, she would burn the world and watch it turn to ashes with her daughter sitting next to her.
Determination and vengeance wrapping around her heart, Inketi stood from the place she had spent hours knelt over and walked over to her chamber doors. Throwing open the heavy wooden doors, she fixed her dress, wiped her tears amd strutted out of the room.
First step to revenge, find her dearest husband. Then she could begin to tear apart the world with her bare hands.
