Serafina: Becoming a Princess

Chapter One

From her king-sized, canopied bed, Sera could look into her attached living compartment. Laney, her youngest guard, lay in a smaller bed that was pushed up against an opposite corner, completely blind to the world. The room then had two walls coming towards each other in a picture frame sort of way, showing that there was an invisible separation between the two rooms.

Her bed chamber portion came with a door to her right that led to a large bathroom. Laney's bed that she was currently sleeping in was next to a door that led to a walk-in closet. Then on the opposite corner was another bed for any of the guards that wanted to use it.

In the room that was for leisure and entertainment, there was a large fireplace, currently laying cold due to it being the spring months of Regnum. On walls surrounding the fireplace were built-in bookshelves holding some of her favorite tomes. A small work desk sat in the corner of the wall that had the one door entering her room from the corridor outside. A small dining table sat by one of the tall windows on the opposite wall. Most people would be in awe of the two rooms, but for Sera it was all she had ever known.

She looked over at another one of her body guards, Eileen, who was sitting in one of her arm chairs. Her long blonde hair was tied in a high ponytail as her ocean blue eyes scanned the pages of a book in her lap. On the sofa was another one of her bodyguards, Jelena, was fast asleep, her normally braided brown hair, lay in waves softly framing her face, her amber eyes hidden behind her eyelids.

Sera sighed and placed her head back down on the pillow. She stared up at her royal blue canopy, her mind trying to recall the images before her body forced her awake. It was frustrating. It was almost as if they were memories, yet not her own, but still familiar with familiar faces. 

She reached over to her night table and grabbed a small vial. A sleeping concoction that Cicero, the old royal physician, had made for her. It worked wonders to just put her out. Within one gulp the contents were sliding down the back of her throat and soon resting in their intended location.

Closing her eyes, Sera felt the effects of the serum within minutes. She felt herself floating back down into her subconscious and slipping back into the images that first awoke her.

In an elegant room fit for a king, Sera watched in silence the scenes that played before her. She recognized the room as her father's, King Jovan Gavriil of Regnum, from anywhere. It looked more or less the same as the one she had walked into, with maybe some subtle differences. One being a portrait that was missing of herself and her brother, Prince Zander, that hung above the fireplace that faced her father's bed.

There were physicians all around the bed. One man resembled a younger Cicero, with a graying beard and hair but missing the receding hairline and the curving posture that sometimes comes with age. Concerned for the amount of people hovering over the bed, Sera moved towards them to see an ailing young man. Knowing the portraits that were scattered in the castle, she deduced that the dream that she was experiencing was of an event that happened in the past.

The ailing man was clearly her father, but he was nearly twenty years younger than what she knew of him to look like in the present day. He had a mop of curly black hair, that was currently matted to his forehead and head from sweat that came from a dangerously high fever. His sapphire eyes appeared as if they were trying to stay focused on their surroundings, as to not miss a single word from one of the men in white coats. 

Cicero looked up to the rest of his colleagues, "Someone must fetch his Royal Highness. He should spend whatever time may be left with his father."

Another physician briskly walked out the door, which then turned into a hard run from the thumps that Sera could hear outside.