Hellfyre

Chapter One

Chapter One

The silence woke her.

She peeked her head out of her mass of blankets she slept under each night to glance out the window. Pitch black. No wonder it was silent. It was the dead of night. Ainsley wasn't quite sure why she was awake. She took stock of her surroundings. She was alone in her bedchambers. The moonlight filtering through her bay windows, looking out onto the lake and beyond that, the mountains, cast shadows around her room. Plenty of places for enemies to hide, but she knew there were none. It would be near impossible to penetrate the fortress that was her home.

She clambered out of bed, no use trying to go back to sleep now. Once she was awake, that was it. Her nightgown was no match for the cold mountain air. It was December and winter had settled her claws into the Kingdom. She donned her dressing gown and padded over to the windows. She relaxed into the pillows she had set up onto the bench, she loved to read there in the early afternoon hours, feeling the sun on her face, warming her, even in the coldest days of winter.

The moonlight reflected on the lake, making it look like a painting. It was a scene she had attempted to paint many times, on her Madame's orders. However, she hadn't an artistic bone in her body. Much to her Madame's displeasure. Apparently, all young women are supposed to be painters and singers and poets. All things, Ainsley most decidedly was not. Ainsley liked fighting, and playing in the dirt, and trying on her father's old armor. Ainsley had only ever wanted to be a warrior her whole life. But that life wasn't for girls, and certainly not for Princesses.

Ainsley looked past the lake, to the right of the palace where the Exchange would be bustling in just a few hours. Vendors set up before the light of dawn to get the first stragglers passing through to the kingdom, or the surrounding towns, or even those visitors to the palace. Now though, it was dark. The usually bustling section of the Kingdom was silent. Everything was so silent.

Sometimes Ainsley reveled in the silence. Her life could be loud at times. When she went out into the Kingdom, everyone everywhere wanted to talk to her. Inside the palace, there were always maids and ladies in waiting and officers and lords and ladies needing one thing or another. And since her father had become too ill to be the ambassador of the Kingdom, it had fallen upon her shoulders.

She wasn't Queen yet. She couldn't hold the official title until her Father passed away, and honestly, she wasn't looking forward to it. But she was the only heir to the throne. Her mother had passed away when she was just a toddler, and her Father was too devastated to remarry. He had never gotten over her mother's death. If the illness hadn't reared its head nearly 15 years after her death, Ainsley would have claimed it death from a broken heart.

Looking out over the grounds, Ainsley saw the training grounds where the Fledglings would begin their training at dawn. One day they would be full-grown Warriors, out patrolling the grounds and the rest of the Kingdom. Or even being sent out to battles if time of War came again. However, War hadn't been seen in the Kingdom or its surrounding Territories since her Father had taken the throne when he was 15.

King Phillip, her Father's Father, had led the Kingdom to war against the Dark Lord. He had been harboring those with magic, teaching them to use it for Evil, and King Phillip had finally had enough. Magic had been outlawed in the Kingdom when King Phillip had taken the throne. The Dark Lord had decided he would take anyone remaining who practiced Magic, who hadn't already been exiled to the Outlands, and groom them to be a Dark Army, hellbent on taking the throne and ruling the Kingdom. King Phillip had sent all his Warriors into battle, himself being killed in one of the first few confrontations. Ainsley's Father, King Edvard then had to take the throne and command the troops into finishing the battle at 15. Luckily for him, he won. And he took his Father's law very seriously, stamping out the rest of the magic in the Kingdom. Anyone who threatened this magic free zone was exiled to the Outlands. One only had to disagree with the King to be sent out there for good. Her Father wasn't a cruel man, but he wouldn't stand for treason, as any good ruler shouldn't.