Prologue
PROLOGUE
T he season in which life as Luella Eritrais knew it ended, it was cold and dreadfully bleak.
The day had started off rather unassuming.
She had awoken in her usual, languorous morning routine. Body stretching over cool silk sheets as the hem of her slip tickled the bare skin on her thighs. The air was chilly, bordering on too cold in this time of changing seasons, where the gold-hued vestiges of fall tried dearly to keep hold over the land.
Luella had risen and donned her favorite pale rose robe. The end brushed against the floor with every step she took. Bare feet padded along the chilled tiles like a caged animal or some forgotten, locked-away thing as she paced.
It seemed to never end.
The pacing, the sighing, and the longing. A trinity of heartbroken actions, beget by the circumstances of her life. Locked away in her lonesome tower, withering like a flower or decaying like the ruins on the far edges of her home, the fae kingdom of sunlight, Solis—ruins she used to enjoy roaming around in her youth, a play-pretend sword of fire-forged glass clutched in one fist, a book in the other.
Luella used to parry and knock about on the ruinous scape of old towers and crumbled structures, bare feet—much like her own now—lithely dancing across the rough surfaces, leaving scratches and bloody sores. She couldn’t have cared less back then. Now, even at the threat of an imperfection marring her body, her engrained teachings caused her to wilt further. No imperfections should mark her skin, no impurities or shortcomings. Anything less than proper and perfect would not do.
As the sole Princess of Solis, Luella strived to be as her namesake entails, a demure princess raised high above and kept safely away. Untouched and unmarred by the things in this world her many tutors said would be ruinous for a soft-hearted heirus fae such as herself.
No longer was Luella permitted to play a pretend game of a soldier warding off some nameless foe; instead, she saved these fantasies for her reading. Though she was forced to parade about in the highest quality of silks and play the role of a couth princess, she filled her empty days and long silences with adventures of great peril.
Love stories and war stories alike. Sometimes, both were found in between pages of the same book. She relished the time tucked away, even further from the reality of life.
The night prior, Luella had fallen asleep in the middle of one such novel, face pressed against ink-stained pages as her delicate fingers had curled into the leather spine, nestled between plush throws and memories of escape to some foreign land.
Dreams had been wild and fleeting.
Even now, Luella struggled to wrap her hands around the distant feeling they had brought. Good or bad, she was unsure.
Her brain was still littered with the mere impression of the images she had seen in her dreams. Hazed scenes of warm fire and soft touches—comforts she would never have.
Sometimes, Luella wished she would simply die in her sleep. To fall victim to dreams would have been a much better fate than the one that awaited her in her future.