Queen

Prologue

More often than not, Maisilene got her way. Her whims and fancies were the unspoken laws within the walls of the Tjorv palace. She was the sun around which her kingly father revolved, her moods dictating the tides of the castle.

"If you don't let me out...I'll...I'll...throw myself from the balcony!" Maisilene's threat, laced with the desperation of the spoiled and willful, hung in the air as she pressed her face against the door. Through the thick mahogany, she listened for any sign of acquiescence, but only the familiar, disdainful click of the queen's slippers descending down the hallway reached her ears.

"You're a terrible mother!" she cried out, her fists pounding against the solid barrier. "I won't forgive you! Ever!" The outburst, childish in its nature, seemed glaringly inappropriate for someone of nineteen years.

In the kingdom of Tjorv, whispers floated like leaves in the wind about the princess - a creature of tempestuous will and unchecked desires. A monster, some dared to say, nurtured into being by the doting indulgence of her father, king Aunum. His only daughter, his Princess Maisie, lived in a world where her words were commandments and her displeasure a calamity. Denied nothing, her whims often held more weight than the counsel of seasoned advisors. Thus, when her mother, the queen, put her foot down, forbidding her from accompanying her father and brother to the border, the corridors of the palace braced for the storm that was sure to follow.

A great demon, known to all but spoken of in hushed tones, awoke in the girl—a fiendish temper that saw vases shattered against walls and ancient swords, relics of the kingdom, hacked into the wood of bed posts in blind rage. Ser Karn, the loyal guard assigned to her door, found himself the unwilling audience to her tirades. A man of unwavering duty, he had stood outside her door through countless outbursts, his stoic demeanor unbroken even as a string of unconventional curses rained down upon him. This time, as Maisilene demanded her release, her words were particularly venomous, targeting not just the old knight but the lineage that bore him. She cursed the "stupid ugly boar" that had mothered Ser Karn and the "greasy old shit" who had sired him.

The knight's response, delivered with the patience borne of years of service, was simple. "Now, now, settle down little princess, it is for your safety."

In a fit, Maisilene slammed her fist against the door. The pain that followed was a sharp reminder of her own powerlessness, a feeling that only fueled her anger further. It was intolerable, the audacity of Ser Karn to chuckle in the face of her wrath!

Her father, the king of the isle, had made a promise, a sacred vow that she, and not her foolish little brother, Alden, would accompany him on his next journey. Such a denial from her mother could perhaps be stomached, but from her papa? The man who had always seen her as the jewel of Tjorv, the apple of his eye? She had believed, with the certainty of one never denied, that she held him ensnared around her little finger.

But as the king's gilded coach rolled away from the castle gates, taking with it her hopes of escaping the dull grey isle, Maisilene felt a betrayal sharper than the sting of any slap. Confined to her chambers, facing the vast, uncaring expanse of the ocean, she was powerless to do anything but watch. And so, she screamed out of the unlatched window, her words lost in the roar of the wind and the endless sea. "Feed the crows, you spineless worm!" she yelled, her voice a mere whisper against the might of the elements, her midnight curls lashing her cheeks in the salty breeze.

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