The year is 1464.
The War of the Roses rages on; a great showdown between Lancaster and York.
Yet, asleep in her bed, fiery-haired Melissa Woodville dreams of splintered shields, broken swords, and the resounding screams of wounded men in the Battle...
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HOT, STIFLING HEAT. Sticky, lukewarm rain. The clanging and clashing of swords, the shouts of wounded men, the wailing of dying soldiers, and the gleaming, golden crown atop one man's helmet.
The dream — or rather, the nightmare — was the same, as it always had been. The blood and gore, dirtied swords and splintered shields, oozing wounds that would most definitely scar, and the labored breaths coming from men with roses emblazoned on their armor, red and white alike — all of it was the same.
Sometimes, Melissa wondered where her brain conjured up such vivid scenarios. It wasn't like she had ever been in battle before. That she had ever held a sword at all was by her twin brother's grace; Richard (or, as she called him, Richie) who taught her how to slash and pivot in the dark of night, behind the church near their manor house. So, when she saw all of this in her dreams, it was for the first time, and not some tragic memory she had firsthand witnessed.
Of course, it had been years since this kind of battle had been novel for her. Melissa saw her first man killed when she was six, when one soldier stabbed another in the neck and let him fall to the ground, dead on the muddy fields of Bosworth (back then, she obviously hadn't known where it actually was).
She had woken up, screaming and screaming, and nothing anyone had done was able to calm her down, until mother had arrived and forced a tonic of mint and lavender down her throat. That was when Jacquetta Woodville knew that her redheaded daughter — her only redheaded daughter — had talents as she did, as her eldest sister Elizabeth did.
But, where Elizabeth was reticent, even reluctant to accept the reality of their descent, Melissa accepted the explanation eagerly. Maybe it was because she had been so young, or perhaps, as her elder sister said, she was naive (she wasn't), but the girl had always known that there was something different about her. Mother even said that Melusina's blood ran stronger in Melissa than it did in Elizabeth (as evidenced by the waves of flame she had as hair), so to her it only made sense that she would accept it easier than her sister would.
