Two Hundred Years in Slavery is all the people of Xathania have known. Toiling and dying for a kingdom that has only snarled at them. Not until hope surfaces as a story in the wind and the flames of a spirit long forgotten resurfaces to face the g...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Cora's mother had been dead for three years. The news had ripped her apart from the inside and she had been unable to collect her thoughts, had been unable to meet with her father until the day after she arrived at the palace. She was escorted by three guards who led her to a leisure room filled with sofas and cushions. She was advised to leave her shoes at the door because of the extravagant carpets.
She did as she was told and found her father lounging between heaps of pillows and watching his city or rather his empire. If Cora was in a warier state of mind, she would have thought that he could see everything. Every trader, every subject, everything crawling and flying. He looked at her and she realized that she had his eyes.
'Cora,' he said as a form of greeting. She bowed slightly but didn't sit. Abbel, the younger of her two older brothers, who had hugged her on her arrival had been welcoming while her oldest brother, Fadri, and her father had been less welcoming and suspicious of her and her claims. She didn't blame them, she had expected to find one family member in Opir but had somehow come to find three.
'Sit,' her father offered and she did.
The man kept his eyes on his city as he spoke. 'I knew your mother was a noble the second she showed me what she could do, the fire she was capable of summoning. I had wanted some sort of release the night we might and asked for a courtesan but those rotten Welkamians brought her to me. She had your brothers and by the time she had you, my training at Sect was completed. That pompous bastard said I may take my heirs but not you. I was heir to a great empire and begged that wretched man to let me take you and your mother.'
Cora's father looked at her. 'Normally they'd take Xathanian children from their parents when they are five. They took you in the middle of the night and put you with the others in the nursery. Your mother searched for you and sought me out. I had never been that devastated. Leaving you was not a choice, we needed to run before he killed your mother or brothers.'
Cora got all the answers to questions that she had but she still couldn't figure out how he was suddenly sure that it was her. Cora didn't have much time to ponder on this because out of the corner of her eye, she saw a figure emerge out of the darkness. Out of nothing. She took her eyes off her father and met Zebel's silver ones.
'Zebel,' she spat and before her father could react she called for the guards and put herself between her father and the King of Orcus. The guards rushed in weapons drawn.
'You have barely been here for a day and you already have them wrapped around your pretty little finger, Princess,' the rotten thing cooed at her.
He clicked his tongue, 'Your husband's habit of leaving your side will get you killed. Just look at what happened with your companion. Rather tragic how she and those knights died.'
The words slammed into Cora like they were a physical thing. She wavered a bit but did not stop using herself as a physical shield against Zebel. If he struck, she was the only one who could truly block him.
