Queen of Fire (A Light-Bringer Prequel)

Five

"Your Highness! Your Highness! Princess Marilyn!" a servant shouted.

"Yes, what is it?" she mumbled, still partially asleep.

"Your Highness, please, come quick!" the servant urged. "It's your parents!"

Marilyn's eyes snapped open. Marilyn threw back the covers, pulled on a dressing robe, and ran out of her rooms. She ran like hell through the castle corridors.

Gods, please let King Damon and Queen Calista be alive and well, she prayed as she bolted up the staircase to the King's Chambers at the top of the tower.

Nearing the top, Marilyn passed a thirteen-year-old servant girl sitting on a stair with her face in her hands as she sobbed. Marilyn reached the top and pushed her way through only to see a grisly sight.

To say that it was a massacre would be an understatement. There was blood everywhere—the bed was covered in blood, and blood dripped from Damon's fingertips onto the floor.

Damon's face and neck were coated in blood, so much that Marilyn couldn't see her father's hairline through it all. His throat was slashed, teeth bloodstained, and his bare chest was covered in slashes and stabs. The same golden eyes that Marilyn and Ashlynn shared were open and unseeing.

The queen was no better. Calista's blonde hair was the same bloody red as the king's beside her. Her hair was also matted with blood. Her throat was slashed similarly to Damon's, and her white nightgown was stained dark red and torn from knife wounds to her chest and upper abdomen.

"What's going on?" asked Ashlynn, breaking through the wall of guards. "What happened to my—"

Ashlynn broke into tears. Marilyn couldn't tear her eyes away.

"Good night, my Firestarter."

She wouldn't get to hear her mother call her her Firestarter again. She won't be able to have her father call her his "ember."

King Damon and Queen Calista were dead, and there was nothing she could do about it.

___

Marilyn looked out the window in her room as she watched several messengers leave castle grounds on their horses.

"The King and Queen are dead," they will say. "The two-week mourning period will commence, followed by the coronation of Her Majesty, Queen Ashlynn Pyro."

Her voice was slightly raspy, and Marilyn opted to leave her hair down to hide the bruises on her neck.

This is all just one really bad dream, she thought. I will wake up, and my parents will be alive, and Ashlynn won't be a witch.

Marilyn turned away from the window, left her room, and absentmindedly walked through the corridors. Her black boots were quiet on the stone, and her hands were in the pockets of her black pants. Marilyn eventually found herself wandering through the castle's grand library.

While the library was only a single floor, it was one of the largest rooms in the castle. When she was a young child, her parents wouldn't let her in the library for fear of her burning all of the sacred texts. She walked until she started passing portraits of all the past Pyro kings—with King Adramelech, the King of Fire, being the first. After Adramelech was his son, King Aatish, and his son after him, and so on until her father was last.

Marilyn paused and stared at her father's portrait.

Please come back, she silently pleaded. I need you now more than ever because I'm stuck with a witch about to ascend the throne, and no one will believe me if I accuse her of dark magic. I'll do anything to get you back! I'll sell my soul to the Diablo himself if I have to!