Prologue
The night was cold, colder than Ella cared for. The pine trees surrounding her in the dark forest swayed with the air, rain pouring down through the branches and hitting the ground floor like piercing knives. The thunder roared as she ran with her child wrapped in her cloak, his small but mighty fists finding their way around her red curls as he buried his face in her neck for warmth. Her cloak was drenched with rain, and she could barely see past the teardrops in her lashes. However, she persisted with every step she took.
She wished that it didn’t have to be like this. When Seth was an infant, it wasn’t as tricky. When the boy’s power erupted out from his eyes like hellfire, it was only an occasional occurrence. She pretended not to notice it and continued her duties as Queen of Sweden. She hoped these moments would cease if she ignored them for long enough.
Throughout her pregnancy, she didn’t have this hope. When the truth revealed who his father indeed was, she was bedridden with fear as to what precisely brewed in her womb. She wondered if this entity would rip through her stomach from the inside out or eat her alive to satisfy its demonic cravings for human flesh. Pictures of creatures with giant, outstretched wings and monstrous crimson eyes rippled through her thoughts as she tried to sleep at night. The maids wrote it off as the effects of pregnancy, but it was so much more than that. She was being driven to insanity.
Her body was no longer hers, and she had no clue what intruder was making a home inside of her.
Not only did she have to deal with this burden, but her kingdom demanded to know their Prince’s father. She was unmarried and was supposed to be wed that following month, but the news of her illegitimate child destroyed any future marriage prospects for her. Gossip of how their Queen was a whore and a poor excuse of a ruler spread across the nation.
She locked herself in her chamber for the entirety of her pregnancy, only to leave at night to research in the library. She read book after book on vampires, warlocks, and demonic beings to begin to attempt what was growing inside of her body. She knew that the warlocks that resided outside her kingdom were the creation of demons having their way with human women. The man that she used to love was something different than a demon. Something more sinister. Something that digs into the very parts of her soul and strikes her with unfathomable fear.
And she was carrying his last and only child.
She finally arrived at the doorstep of one of the men she despised most. She hesitated to knock on the wooden door, as with every visit to this place. She feels as if every time she brings her son here, he is becoming one step closer to becoming the disgraceful creature that he truly is. If her heart allowed it, she would lock him in the castle bound by chains for eternity, or however long his kind lived.
But the mother inside of her knocked on the door, knowing deep down that this was the only way to prevent her son from hurting himself or the entirety of France.
The door opened, and her tired eyes were met with electrifyingly bright blue ones. The man’s demeanor changed, disdain lingering in his furrowed eyebrows. How he looked down upon her at his doorstep made her feel inferior. The judgment radiating from him each time she came here made her feel significantly worse.
The tiredness in her eyes always made him open his home to her. He repeatedly tried to explain to her that erasing the child’s memories was only a temporary solution. He told her that with time, on his eighteenth birthday, these memories would come flooding back to him. And with these memories, he will understand who he truly is.
These memories could cause the end of this Monarchy and the entire world. This weight that Ella puts on the warlock’s shoulders can crush any man’s spirit.
But this warlock is far from man and has long lost his will.
Queen Ella and her son were sitting on the warlock’s sofa yet again, at least to her knowledge. To the boy, this is the first time he’s ever seen this man.
“What did he do for you to be here at this hour?” he asked her, kneeling to the boy’s height. With age, he was becoming the spitting image of his father: raven black hair with tight ringlets of curls and flawless porcelain skin without a single freckle or blemish.
And those damned luminous green eyes that signify the destruction of the world as we know it.
“I discovered that his favorite teddy, which he claims speaks to him, is nothing less than a demon. I assumed it was him being a child, but I heard it. The wretched thing called him master, ” she said with disdain. “My son is not their master.”
“Unfortunately, he is. And you will see with time that his subjects grow impatient.”
“He is the future King of Sweden. He has duties to fulfill in this country, and I must make sure he performs them. I will ensure he will never succumb to the evil that his father is. He is half of me. I will make him wholly my own.” She promised, her voice shaking as tears rolled down her flushed cheeks. “He is my son. I have nurtured him in my womb and given him life. I will decide who will bow to him, not him.”
The boy tugged on his mother’s dress, catching the attention of the troubled Queen and the impatient warlock. Her breath caught and froze as he looked at her son.
His eyes were the color of obsidian. The veins under his eyes were now black and stretched to the length of his nose. His hands shook as he gripped her dress tighter, attempting to speak, but the words escaped him. The warlock froze in fear at the sight of this.
“Eris... I’ve never seen him like this.” Her voice shook with fear. “This isn’t my son.”
Several different possibilities flashed in his mind. Is he possibly a vampire, and he hasn’t fed in these five years of age? That cannot be possible. His mother would have been dead by now, along with an entire kingdom. The existence of a vampire infant is a myth.
Although, his existence was supposed to be a myth.
Suddenly, the boy’s slurred attempts to speak grew silent. He turned towards the warlock with a grin that sent shivers down his spine and caught his breath from fear. This deranged smile is something that Eris has only heard of from legends.
The smile of Lucifer Morningstar as he was cast out from heaven and his descent to hell.
His neck swiftly turned ninety degrees to the left, the deranged smile remaining prevalent on his lips. His expression remained unchanged as his neck snapping filled their ears. The Queen’s blue eyes widened with uncontrollable fear, expecting him to fall over dead to the ground. Instead, he inched closer to Eris, remaining unphased by his neck hanging idly to the left. She began holding a shaky hand to him, her fingers inching closer to touch him. Maybe if she did something, it would bring him back from this nightmare. He would wake up from this trance, and Eris would erase the memories of this ever happening. They would go home, and he would be her sweet little boy again.
“Please, for the love of God, don’t touch him.” Eris pleaded, the desperation in his voice retracting her hand back from him.
“Please, for the love of God, don’t touch him.” The boy’s voice mocked. Only, this voice wasn’t his own.
“Demon... he’s a demon, isn’t he?”
The boy lunged forward at the warlock, knocking both of them into a tall bookcase that sat behind Eris. The warlock’s breath caught as the sudden rush of adrenaline flooded his body. He attempted to grab onto something, anything to cushion the fall, but he fell with a crash, as books fell from the now broken bookcase. The boy wrapped his tiny but strong hands around the warlock’s neck. The strength alone crushed his windpipe. A sinister, sharp-toothed grin appeared on the boy’s face as he reached forward and took a substantial chunk out of the warlock’s shoulder. He screamed out in agony, his cries coming out as nothing but gasps for air with widened, horrified eyes.
He was eating him. He felt his flesh being torn apart as he attempted to rip this demonic child off of his chest, but he had such a firm grip around his broken collarbones that he wouldn’t budge. He would only grip him tighter, his fingertips ripping into his neck as blood spilled further down his chest and on the wooden floor at his sides.
He was going to pop his head off from choking him. This is how he would die.
“Seth, PLEASE! YOU HAVE TO STOP!”
The sound of his mother’s voice whipped the boy’s head around. The sight of her son with these soulless, dead eyes with blood pouring from his mouth struck a fear in her that rattled her brain with such terror it brought her to hysteria. This moment put the fate of Sweden into the hands of her son, hands which are not quite his own to control yet.
Queen Ella saved Eris’s life that night. As the boy looked back at his mother with confusion, Eris took hold of the child’s head and snapped it completely, killing him in an instant. The boy’s body fell lifelessly to the side, his mother screaming out in agony as he rushed to her son’s side. She took her son in her arms, sobbing hysterically as his head hung lifelessly.
Eris knew he wouldn’t stay dead. A being that powerful would never die.
Eris had just enough time to heal himself from his wounds. If he had waited any longer, he would have died.
He didn’t want to know what would have happened to Ella if she had been left alone with her son like that.
The warlock had to use the most substantial level of magic to put the boy to rest and erase his memories of what happened that night. At five years old, his power outweighed that of a 350-year-old warlock.
That night, Eris vowed to do what Queen Ella asked.
That night, he experienced something he hadn’t felt in centuries.
Fear.
