Souls in Ruin (The Soulbound #1)

Prologue

Iwas born to die.

Not in the dramatic sense of some tragic destiny foretold by prophetic crones, but in the simple fact that I should have never existed. A union between a king and his guilt, sealed in a moment of weakness or madness, and certainly never meant to draw breath.

For the palace’s halls were lined with relics of history and control, and I was a relic of impulse, wrapped in blankets instead of parchment and left to be forgotten.

In many ways, my conception was a miracle. Not the divine blessing so often lauded by doting parents, but the shocking outcome of a romance doomed to wilt.

The King of Vareth and the strange woman who captured his fleeting fancy—whispers of their affair echoed louder than the most raucous battle cries, yet none were privy to the means by which she’d snared the monarch’s attention.

They spoke of sorcery and enchantments, claiming no mere woman could captivate him so.

It was a temporary madness, they said, a fever that broke as soon as I drew breath.

Yet, in those feverish months, I was created, a forbidden merger of his blood and her mystery.

For reasons perhaps known only to himself, my father chose not to rid himself of me alongside my mother.

And so I came into this world, unplanned and unwelcomed, a monument to what should have never been.

Some said I was a test, others, a punishment.

Even then, swaddled in my cradle, I could feel the weight of what I was—an unwelcome burden that settled in with my first breath, never to be lifted.

If the stories are to be believed, my mother appeared at the court one day, an enigmatic figure with striking beauty and a presence that could not be ignored. Some claimed she was a sorceress, others, a runaway from the Lost Kingdoms.

All agreed she was dangerous, a temptation the king would do well to resist. Yet resist he did not. Their union was brief, scandalous, and intense enough to defy the rigid constraints of royal propriety. It ended as suddenly as it began, and I was the unasked-for memento left in its wake.

Some said she loved him. Others, that she loved only the power he represented. But the truth, like my father’s fleeting affection, remains elusive.

The more fantastical rumors claimed she bore the blood of gods, that her swift disappearance was a desperate act of concealment by those afraid of what a child born of such lineage might bring.

Whether my birth was the product of affection, ambition, or a cruel jest by fate, it truly did not matter, for it left me with only the faint echo of any sort of parental love.

My first scream must have shattered whatever plans my mother had, for her disappearance was as immediate as my presence was unwanted. Like a rose clutched too tightly, she was gone as swiftly as I arrived, her existence pressed out by my ill-fated birth.

In the days that followed, I was left motherless and surrounded by more rumors than I could count.

Theories about my mother’s fate became a favored court pastime, each more grim and theatrical than the last. Whether by intent or neglect, I grew up without even the ghost of her presence to console me.

I was a burden to be tolerated, not a child to be cherished.

Raised with the education of a noble but the affection of a stone, I was less a daughter and more a living reminder of my mother’s unforgivable sin.

King Aeldrin, for all his supposed indifference, did not let me slip into complete obscurity. No, he saw to it that I was kept alive and mostly out of sight, a strange balancing act that served his duty without inviting further disgrace.

Was it guilt that led him to acknowledge me even this much? Or some darker scheme to appease the forces he believed threatened by my birth? I grew up believing he cared only for his crown, with no room for a mistake like me.

Perhaps my eyes, so like my mother’s, reminded him of what could have been—the same eyes that scandalized the court and marked me as different from birth.

More likely, I was simply a consequence he could not bring himself to kill.

And so I remained, an unsightly bruise he learned to live with, my existence tolerated as long as it remained hidden behind closed doors.

There were moments, brief as they were painful, where I imagined he might look at me with something other than regret. But those were fantasies, born of a child’s desperate hope and quickly smothered by reality.

What is the weight of a life that was never meant to be?

Heavy enough to crush the dreams of those foolish enough to hope, but never so heavy that it would end.

Mine is the weight of secrecy, of isolation, of a girl turned ghost and back again.

It is a life measured in stolen moments, the whisper of silk in an empty hallway, the pale trace of a mother’s eyes in her daughter’s face.

It is a life not easily shed, for I have tried.

As here I remain, the consequence of a reckless love, as unyielding as the granite spires of the palace itself.

No, I was not born to live.

In truth, I should never have been born at all.