From the Ashes [Guilded Kingdoms: Book 1][Book sample; rest in KU]

Chapter 1

Cold and dirty, Lael sat on her knees in front of the stone hearth. Her fingers were black from picking through the ashes of a fire long dead to find the unburnt treasure it had left behind for her. After the loss of her father almost seven years ago, those few pieces of charcoal were the only glimmer of hope that Lael had left in her life.

Ever under the watchful eye of her stepmother, Lael was forbidden to leave the grounds of the estate. A home that had once been filled with love and laughter had become little more than a gilded prison haunted by ghosts of the past and of a life where happiness was not merely a memory.

Hearing the creaking of the floorboards from the rooms above, Lael knew the household servants had started to arrive and hurried to gather up her prize into the small, wooden box she kept it in. She then scooped up a couple handfuls of the ashes and placed them in an open jar, replacing the cork stopper, before disposing of the rest and starting a new fire for the day ahead.

"Good morning, Bridget!" Lael greeted over her shoulder when she heard the cellar door open. There was only one person that would be coming down to the cellar besides Lael at this hour of the morning and that was Avarill's loyal housekeeper. She had been Avarill's housekeeper since just before Lael's father had taken over from his father as the Earl of Avarill.

"You'd best get cleaned up quickly and hide those things in your room before the Mistress sees you like that."

Lael sighed at the housekeeper's stern warning, knowing that she was right. Lael loved to draw and paint, but, for some reason that she could not understand – especially as the arts were usually deemed acceptable qualities for a lady – Nelissa, her stepmother, did not.

Only days after they'd laid her father in the ground, Lael had found Nelissa gathering up and tossing out all of her art supplies and journals. Since then, Lael had taken to creating her own in secret from the fireplace ashes and charred wood remains. Her brushes she made from hair that she clipped from her horse's mane and bound to twigs with bits of twine and wire she'd scavenged. Acquiring paper, however, was a more difficult matter that generally involved the bribery of servants to smuggle a few sheets in for her.

"Oh, and, Lael."

Lael paused in front of the cellar doorway, anticipating what Bridget was going to say next.

"A very good morning to you too, and you'll find a few new sheets of paper tucked away inside the laundry once I've finished with it."

Lael squealed in delight and, whirling around, flung herself at the older woman in an overly exuberant hug.

"Thank you, Bridget!"

With a gentle chuckle filled with love, she returned Lael's hug.

"Consider it an early birthday present, my dear. Hard to believe that in little over five months it'll be eighteen years since your father, may he ever live in our memories, brought you home to us," the short, and ever so slightly rounded, housekeeper replied as her hand reached up to fondly stroke Lael's long, gently curling, blonde hair. Then, straightening up and with a mock sternness she added. "Now, hurry along before Mistress or one of her daughters wakes up and sees you in the state you're in."

After giving her a quick kiss on the cheek, Lael bounded off to do as Bridget said.

Lael's room was different than the other bedrooms as it was in one of the manor's conical towers, in fact, it was the entire tower. Wide and spacious, the main portion of her living space was the ground floor of the tower, but, around the inside wall there was a large bookcase and spiral staircase that took her to a mezzanine reading nook at the top of the tower. It was a beautiful room and the views from the large tower windows could not be rivaled by another other room in the house. Lord Verane, Lael's father, had had the tower commissioned just for her after he had returned from one of his travels, bringing with him a sorrow at the loss of a wife no one had known he'd had and a beautiful, gurgling baby that couldn't have been more than two months old.