The Pain that Made Her Beautiful

The Pain that Made Her Beautiful (Edited)

TO: Everyone who opens this

FROM:me

Hey, everone,

Thank you so much for reading this, it means so much to me that you are willing to take time out of your day just to read my few pages. I REALLY hope you like it and let me know, chapter by chapter, ways that I am able to improve it so that you can better enjoy it.

Blessings

~JDB

All events in this book are fictitious, including the characters. Any that may correspond with known or actual people or event are unintentional.

Chapter 1

Nayeli sat in the damp, dank room; her arms around her knees. Just a few seconds less staring at those ware patterns and snooping, and she would not be going back to the very home she had been trying to avoid her entire life.

Nayeli had two simple duties to perform in life as it was: to honor her masters, and take care of the children that she was put in charge of. Now, everything was about to change into—as she saw it—only what mattered to her. She would be the one obeyed and protected.

It had been no more than two months ago that Nayeli had been playing in the waist high grass of the meadows beyond her Roman town. Nayeli was chasing the eldest boy, Eric, who was thirteen years of age and balancing the littlest girl, Abby, on her hip. Abbey had just tripped over a matted part of grass and gotten a sore knee when Nayeli heard the sound. She heard the bells, the warnings, and the screams of utter terror. She held out her hand toward the other children, yelling, “Hurry Come with me! Don’t leave my side.”

Nayeli had seen little at her tender age of seventeen, but even at her age, she had more than enough experience at protecting the family’s children during raids that she knew where to go. Nayeli ran with the children for about a half-mile and stopped. Kneeling to their level, Nayeli gathered them around her and said,” Ok, now, you know where to go. Stay there until I come back for you. If there is any chance that I don’t return before nightfall, I want you,” she looked at Eric,” to take the rest of your siblings, and yourself, safely to Aquileia. You know the safest route there. When you get there, I want you to locate your uncle and tell him of my instruction.”

Eric nodded dutifully to Nayeli’s commands. He signaled his siblings to follow him by holding out his hands. The others took the hint and ran after Eric, being careful to conceal their location by being almost silent as they ran toward the concave structure in the rocks. As they did, Nayeli ran for the town. She heard screams, grotesque shouting all coming from somewhere in the central square of the town. She poked her head around the corner of a building to see a tall man with wide shoulders and a quick job of shoulder a length cropping of golden blonde hair. He walked as one who was in charge.

Nayeli then could clearly see he was a Germanic tribesman. Along with the screams came recognition of who these raiders were. Nayeli remembered hearing whispers of fear and desperation from her masters, Isobel and Claudius Deangelo, about the raiding parties and the unstoppable force the German raiders presented. Nayeli overheard her masters talking of sending her and their seven children to live with their uncle in Aquileia. They were just too late. Bella and Claudius had made arrangements for them to go the Aquileia that coming week, but if only the raiders had come then instead?

Nayeli followed the screams from where she was—in an alleyway near the most western edge of town—to the middle square. She saw only a quarter of the town’s population in the center square. Where are the others? As she continued to observe the goings on, she noticed that none of the people, who were herded into a tight group, were young adults. But why these people? This makes no sense. Why only them?