Grounded

Prologue

Screams were the only sound coming from the palace. King and Queen Astarot had just sent their daughter, Princess Katia, to her royal chambers. And it should have been like any other night.

Katia lay in her bed, restless as always. She had a fighting spirit, and it kept her awake most nights. Even at eight years old, she wasn't thinking of the unicorns perched outside in the courtyard of their palace or her studies and tests she would have in just four days about etiquette when receiving and hosting a guest.

Instead, she dreamed about the day she'd come into her dragon power. She couldn't wait until she'd sprout wings as large as the clouds could span, and hopefully, they'd be pink. As a faeling, Princess Katia was the only royal rumored to glow pink in her proper fae form. But for whatever reason, her dragon form lay dormant inside her, keeping her mind wandering well into the night.

Except for this night...

When the screams broke out, they echoed through the walls. Katia could hear screams and the raucous feet pattering against the ground, guards calling out commands, and most importantly, her parents' voices.

She tried to escape her room to see what was happening, but her faithful guards would not let her leave.

"Please! Hello, let me out! What's going on?" She shouted above the chaos, but no one responded.

She sensed Carthage and Bernard at their posts, but she couldn't understand why they wouldn't respond to her.

Katia continued banging on her door, hoping someone would let her out, but nobody came. She was still learning to use her fae powers, but in her fae form, she was more powerful.

Katia calmed herself, remembering her teachings from her instructor, Kallius, and slowed her breathing. She couldn't shift if she were too worked up. Katia closed her eyes and thought about what she looked like in her fae form and slowly, painfully, began to shift. The first thing to change was her eyes. They transitioned from a beautiful brown to an electric pink. Her golden mane changed next, growing in length as two fishtail braids appeared on either side of her head. Her ears grew to a sharp point at the tips, and her aura visibly turned pink, marking her as a royal fae.

Instead of trying to get out through the front door again, she crawled inside her fireplace. She wouldn't have dared to do it in her regular form because her body would not have been strong enough to climb out.

Katia braced herself inside by holding herself up using her arms and the strength of her legs to steady herself, and one brick at a time, she used the edge pieces to climb her way out. A strategy her parents taught her to use in the event of an invasion, and from the sounds of it, this was the exact scenario she'd practiced for.

When she reached the top of the fireplace, she found herself coming out of the chimney. Her exit left her on the top of the roof, and with a full view of the palace, she noticed several areas with fire coming out of them and droves of smoke.

"Oh no..." Katia placed her hands over her mouth as her mind jumped into hyperdrive.

Her home was burning.

She was trying to escape, but ...

Where were her parents?

All her training went out the window when she began thinking of the possibility of her parents being gone. What would she do without them? How was she supposed to survive this?

Katia ran across the roof, ducking where she noticed some intruders might see her. She did her best to avoid the fires, but she couldn't see the damage the fires had caused as she ran entirely too quickly while looking over her shoulder, causing her to tumble right back inside the palace.