𝐖𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE:

The trumpets blared, the gates made a booming noise and the palace servants parted in bows. All signaling the arrival of the kidnapped young virgin witch. It was late in the night, close to midnight but no one who was in the Palace was asleep nor clueless about what was the bother.

A bloody old and rotten cold Royal family dressed in red and wet in blood awaited the virgin's delivery with hidden batted breaths and stoic faces. They needed to extract every single drop of her pure magic blood to save their family's youngest.

The king's favorite son.

Harold Sinclair.

The Royal special corps treadled into the monstrous Palace with hard studded boots. That pummelled into the mosaic tiled floors with cruel precision and poisonous pride for doing their King right. One of the King's children narrowed their eyes at the scene before them and held back any inclination to express their distaste for the unnecessary extravagance.

Peasants were dying from starvation, the church was ostracizing the lepers from society, nobles were no longer shy about their decadent lifestyles and incestuous structures. Maintained to keep their wealth within controlled perimeters. Only so they could gamble portions of it away in brothels and salons at the end of the day. Everyone in their kingdom was selfish in their own way. Even the peasants with the way they gave each other understanding.

The young virgin was raw and puffed up from crying too much but even that did not earn any sympathy or distract from the enchanting beauty her face held. She was shoved forward by the bottom of a guard's dirty boot. The poor girl gracelessly landed on the floor, her pumpkin coloured dress bunching itself around her knees. She hurried to fix herself up, bowing before the Royals in a perfect pose of submission.

"Exalted, mercy." she begged, in a cry that fell like a song to her captors ears.

The King's lips curled into a sinister smile, a hand resting calmly under his bearded chin. He looked over to his wife and gave a nod that may as well have been a green light. With the help of her oldest son —Ernest, the Crown Prince — the Queen stood to her full height. With a sophisticated kind of grace only the French held in that century.

The Queen left the Throne Podium in one second and in the next, she hovered over the peasant girl, circling around her like a python studying it's helpless, trembling prey. "Don't worry dear you won't feel a thing." she said but it only sounded like a taunt to everyone's hearing.

The girl sobbed, hard.

The spectacle of the moment, Prince Harold who was also the youngest of the Royal offspring, was lying lifelessly in the arms of Princess Harriet and Prince Ernest. Prince Harold couldn't speak, not after the fresh accident in the woods but he could see. So he took a long glance at the kidnapped maiden. Her face although almost all covered by long hair looked ashen, fear was evident in the way her wet lashes fluttered and he took great pity on her. She didn't deserve to die anymore than he deserved true immortality. He never could stand up to his family though, they didn't realize it yet but it was because of their invisible chains he was in that state.

"Don't waste your time crying child, this is the time to recite your last prayers and make peace with your failures." The Queen said, her slender fingers twirling strands of the brittle hair on the young maiden.

She flinched, "I'm a direct descended of the Aries Coven of Witches, they will come for me." She'd managed to threaten in a thick but wavering voice.

The Aries Coven was infamously famous amongst creatures of the night for their intriguing secretive lifestyle and powerful but deathly abilities. They were notorious for hiding their truest existence from even their own offspring. Most of the coven's witches would only be taught of their roots in their thirties, or at times of dire need but most died in blissful ignorance. Yet this young virgin who could have been at least fifteen or seventeen at most was aware of her roots and had let it known carelessly. To creatures that could use that truth against her.