Avarice

Prologue

Fate. Destiny. Sud'ba. Kismet.

A hundred words that mean the same, all boiling down to one irrefutable truth of life.

No matter where and how far one runs, one cannot escape their destiny.

Fate cannot be challenged; not by gods, not by men, not by kings and not by beggars.

Unchanged, unconquered, and unbeatable it remajns

Until one day, a boy digs his heels in the ground and dares to challenge fate, thus rewriting his destiny.

                          ~~~~~

Iliana Nóvikova is two years old, asleep in her mother's arms, unaware of the celebration happening around her, heedless to the fact that her life, her future is being traded at the very moment.

A boy, fourteen perhaps fifteen-years-old, clasps little silver anklets around her feet to the scattered applause of the few adults that are present to witness the sacred ceremony.

He smiles at the mother, cold and venomous, hands itching for blood, itching to wrap them around her neck and squeeze the life out of her before he calms himself, glances down at the child in the woman's arms, a mockery of a gift that fate delivered to him, and feels fury consume his very being, setting his heart on fire.

Later that night, he stands at the highest point of his fortress, a cigarette on his lips and his head raised towards the starless sky,

There is a storm raging around him

(a visual depiction of what resides in his heart, painted by the universe for the world to witness in all its glory)

But he stands fearless, a prayer, no, a demand on his lips, for kings do not pray, do not kneel and beg, not even to gods.

And Azriel Ilyas Romanov was born a King, born to rule, and rule he would, even over gods.

"You mock me with her presence." Azriel snarls, eyes spitting fire. "Take her, take her back cause I have no need for her. Fucking take her back before I kill her," he roars.

Thunder seems to strike the ground at that moment, noise loud and deafening as if the skies itself are bearing witness to the boy's proclamation.

There is something terribly tragic in the air around him, the heavens crying, full of grief and a deep ache, a sorrowful lament.

Fate simply looks down at him, holding aloft a string and entwining it with his firmly, weaving the threads until they become one, before cutting them from the loom, a mocking whisper on her lips

"as you command, my king."

Iliana Nóvikova is three years old when her parents die in a foreign country, far away from home.

The little girl is found at the crash site, a miraculous sole survivor, crying and wailing while fire consumes her parents bodies behind her, leaving behind no trace of their identities, no trace of her identity.

She will not remember any of it for many years to come. There will be nothing that binds her to her previous life except for a half burnt pink bag with the name Ana stitched on it with beautiful expensive thread embroidery and a silver anklet on her left foot, the other half of the pair not to be found.

Iliana is three when she becomes Ana Winters, a resident of Winters Orphanage, a children's shelter in the small town of Oklahoma.

Thousands of miles away a young boy stares down at the man kneeling before him.