VULCAN

ONE

Eighteen year old Jisoo winced as the cold, wine soaked rag was pressed onto her lash wound.

"I am sorry," whispered her maid and companion, twenty year old Yura.

Yura continued to dress Jisoo's bloody wounds. Jisoo closed her eyes as the pain hit her over and over. She could not see the lashing wounds but she could imagine that they were large welts. They would leave nasty scars.

"Why did you do it, Your highness?" Yura asked after she had finished dressing her injury. "You know what your father is like."

Just because Jisoo had yelled at her older sister for the first time, she had been punished with five lashes by her own father.

"But I did nothing wrong right? It was not my fault. It's just that everyone loves Irene unnie more. I am just a burden to them." Jisoo smiled bitterly.

Yura knew Jisoo. She would never yell at her sister the way she did few moments ago. She knows Irene must've said something like always. It's just that her poor Jisoo lost her control today.

Jisoo hugged her pillow with heavy heart. How she knew that. She knew she was cursed. The only weak princess of a powerful empire.Her fate had been decided the day she was born. She will never get loved. She will just live a caged life. Afterall, she was of no use to her parents.

"If I could wish for anything, I would wish to leave this place. I wish I was never born."

She had always been denied even for the simple pleasures that her father's subjects enjoyed. Familial love. To the common man, Jisoo's life had been blesses, but it was opposite here.

Every single being of Aquatic Inamorta thinks that she is so much loved by her parents that they are not even letting anyone lay their eyes on her. Which was a lie.

Them? Treasuring her?

In reality, her mother was embarrassed to give birth to a child like her. Her father never saw her with love in his eyes but disgust. Her sister hates her to the core of her heart.

And slowly, the pain became her habit.

"Do you mean that?" Yura's hands paused on Jisoo's back.

"What?"

"Do you mean that?" Yura asked again. "Do you really wish to leave the palace?"

"Yes," Jisoo said truthfully. What she would give to be a common girl.

"Then we shall make a plan." Yura spoke with a grin.

Yura took hold of Jisoo's hand and squeezed it tightly. "Jisoo" she said softly, "you are my friend and I do not want to see you sad. I can help you. We can leave together."

Jisoo was not sure. Her father would be furious. If he found out prior, or if he found her after she left, she would be whipped within an inch of her life.

"But what will we do?" Jisoo asked. "My father will search the whole Inamorta to find me, scared that someone might discover my truth. I will not be safe in Aquatic Inamorta."

"We will go to Inferno Inamorta," Yura replied making Jisoo confused.

"What is that?"

"Fire Kingdom." Yura looked at Jisoo with soft eyes."Many people can't live in fire Kingdom unless they are part of it, or have fire blood running through their veins. But I am powerful enough to stay there for few months. And I can also protect you with my power."

"But what if my father comes there to find me?" Jisoo knows her father was not a person to give up so easily. He can't risk his reputation.

"Inferno Inamorta is the only empire who are enemies of aquatic Inamorta. So that's the safest place for now. Although we can't stay there for long, My powers won't be able to hold it for long. After few months when your father will give up, we can move to another empires of Inamorta." Yura explained.