A story about a prince and his pretty consort presumptive.
Crown Prince Raffe, as the only son of High King Alizade and sole heir to the High Throne of the Ruemri Empire, is bound to fulfill one important duty for the crown. Even if that duty involv...
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NIKOLA'S mother, Rayana, had a wandering soul and a free spirit.
After marrying the Sihr clan's Thar and birthed him a daughter, she refused to be tied down by their strict clan rules so she left secretly. She took the path of the forest and never came back. But one day she appeared out of nowhere looking bruised and starved to the bones, clutching a red-faced babe in her arms.
She introduced him as his son but her family did not accept the child because Rayana refused to name his father. The presence of the child she brought made the Thar resent her, keeping away their first born daughter from her. So Nikola grew up with only her mother in a small hut in the middle of the mountains.
Stricken by an incurable illness and the depression growing heavily on her heart from not seeing her only daughter, his mother grew frail. And to her deathbed, she told him his father was a bandit who kidnapped and raped her – a monster who laughed every time she wept and begged.
Her passing was shadowed by remorse and an insatiable yearning to reunite with her daughter. And in the depths of her heart, she confessed she harbored a deep-seated resentment toward Nikola, blaming his very existence as the catalyst for the life she was forced to endure.
After she died, the Thar adopted Nikola; not out of love or forgiveness, but out of responsibility as he was the leader of the clan. However, he was shunned by the villagers, never taught how to read or write, and was fed with spoiled food and water.
He was treated worse than a mere servant.
A simple mistake would get him sacked and beaten until he was unrecognizable.
But Nikola, after all the inhuman sufferings he had endured, never complained. Because he had a secret no one knew, a secret that kept him alive all throughout his childhood.
When he was seven, just before his mother's death, he discovered how to use ena. And the mastery of it came to him as easy as breathing.
And so despite the cold that bit to his skin and the darkness that covered his bare room in the attic of the Sihr clan's manor house, he was content. He can make a little ball of blue fire in the palm of his hand, and that will bring him warmth from the inside out all throughout the winter night.
