A COURT OF DARK SHADOWS AND LIQUID GOLD (AZRIEL X OC)

0.1: Prologue - A Battle Call

Her mother's cabin hadn't changed much since she was a child. It was a modest construction in the middle of the forest on the outskirts of the immense city of Troy, it was close to a mortal town, but it was not apart from it. Ellaria believed that it had been built in that precise forest because it was the habitat of a particularly large family of nymphs, and they did not welcome strangers, so they kept the villagers away most of the time.

It was peaceful and beautiful, it was in the middle of a small clearing that had been created when the trees were cut down to make the cabin, the path to the front door and the property was lined with beautiful yellow flowers that grew naturally all year round, even in the coldest of winters. In addition, the land was fertile in the patio and her mother had created a small garden that fed her, and what they did not consume was always sold in town to help the economy of the small place. Not that they really needed the money, there were advantages to having been Zeus's lover and having had her only daughter, her favorite.

In the center of Troy, in the most luxurious part of the city, near the libraries, parliament, and temples, was the Mansion of Glass, Ellaria's other home. In the main dining room, the ceiling was a large skylight that was decorated with handmade stained-glass that told the story of how her parents had met: the mortal woman, Eliza, and the god king, Zeus, as if all of it had been a beautiful love story worthy of a fairy tale. The truth was that it was nothing special, just the tale of each of the mothers of Zeus's children. The truth was that it was nothing special, just the typical tale of every mortal man and woman who ended up being the parents of a demigod. In the end, the god or god left, and they raised the babies only until they were sent into battle. It has always been like that, and I will continue to be like that.

Ellaria hadn't lived in that house in years, so many years that she was sure if she hadn't maintained the staff that cared for it, it would already be full of dust and cobwebs. And it wasn't because of the skylight, which was nothing more than a mere decoration. It was because when she entered that place, she could only feel the cold of her mother's dead body. Her mom died while Ellaria did not, she was not capable of it, even when the fever and vomiting did not stop for a week, no matter how much medicine she will be given. Eliza Orenson. Her mom. That woman so beautiful in body and soul, she died as mortals did, but she did not do it in old age, she did it before she was even close to turning thirty. She had lived only twenty-six years and only six had been with her daughter, and Ellaria's first memory of her could not have been more than four years. And the more she thought about it, the worse everything got. Ellaria had spent more time training that last year than with her mom, leaving her alone in that big house that Eliza didn't like but lived in because it was closer to her daughter. All because Ellaria had cried whole nights at the thought of not seeing her mom every day when. Ellaria's now adult mind could not let go of the idea that the cold had been because she had left her mom alone in that house, she had grown cold in her solitude, so much so that now she no longer warmed up and never would again. Not because she's dead and death was cold. It was her fault, not the nature of the death.

So she lived there. In the middle of the forest. Well, saying lived was an understatement, since she was there a couple of times a year with luck. Ellaria lived more on the battlefield than in either of the two houses she owns.

Once every two or three years, there was peace. The demigods signed some banal peace treaty in which both sides accepted that the dispute started for whatever childish reason they decided to go to war and kill each other, had already gone on for enough time, and it was time to stop the hostilities. Then they each retired to their homes, whichever they were, to be in peace until the next family gathering, in which someone began to insult each other and the war started again. And Ellaria is no better than they are. It was shortly after she was promoted to High General of her father's armies with the death of her older brother, Aeneas. She had had a period where she was always first on the list of people who might start the next war, and she had been the safe bet for Dionysus's children for a good amount of years. She got over it, but she kept marching into battle, of course she did.