Moonflower

Prologue

I awoke to the sound of delicate, porcelain china crashing down to the newly polished floors of my parents palace. I winced once I remembered how much my mother loved those plates. Her precious china collection that was passed down for three generations, was just completely shattered. Someone's gonna get FIRED today. I shook my head as I sat up. The panicked footsteps turned into frantic, muffled apologies and cries of distress. I felt the tiniest sympathy for whoever dropped those plates, but it went away when I recalled a conversation my mom had with the whole palace's staff. She told them to not touch her plates, especially the china. I could only imagine what her response would be once she found out. And I certainly wouldn't be the one to inform her of the "unfortunate incident."

The truth is, this week was a shitty week. Everyone who lived and worked here was on edge and filled with anxiety and uncertainty. My eldest sister, Alina, had fallen victim to a mysterious disease about two weeks prior. If that wasn't hard enough, everyone else in my family had caught it as well. Everyday there was a new doctor inside of these walls, and all of them had the same conclusion. The disease was aggressive, ugly, and there was no current cure for it. They didn't even know what my sister even had to begin with. Hearing that all at once had completely devastated my parents and my other siblings. Fortunately, I was the only single Darrow that wasn't made victim to this horrible disease. If my relationship with my family wasn't bad, it was just made ten times worse. Everyone was talking about how I must've used "dark magic" (black magic but who's really keeping track) to hurt my family so I could get back at them for abandoning them. And by everyone, I of course meant the palace staff and my family.

"If only they would just treat me as family, then they wouldn't be trying to accuse me of killing them all," I said to absolutely nobody. My only wish in life was that before my parents died, they would finally accept me as their daughter and final heir to the Kingdom. But alas, that would never happen. Both of my parents were sick, and they still couldn't contemplate that I was the only one healthy enough to even run their beloved Kingdom and townsfolk. Deep down I knew that they resented me. I never knew what they resented me for, but the feeling was present from birth up to current time.

I wondered what my parents would've done if I had gotten ill first. Would they hail every single doctor they could find, like what they did for Alina? Would they have cried for hours over the thought that their baby girl was dying and the damage was irreversible? Would they have thought about what might've been for me? Marriage? Children? Happiness? It was a fruitful thought, but all of it was wishful thinking. My parents would've counted down the days til I died, thrown my body to the dragons, and then went on like nothing happened. Nobody would miss me. That was a fact. But when it came to Alina, my parents were going through that and then some. They never gave up hope, not even when my other three siblings got sick, and not even when they themselves got sick. They held onto the hope that one day, by some miracle, one of the doctors they hailed would finally have a cure and life would go back to normal. The great King and Queen of Wineston wouldn't have anything else to worry about. Not even my future. A soft rap on the door pulled me out from my thoughts as I jumped a little. I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. Who the hell wanted me at 7:30 in the morning.

"Come in," I dryly replied.

My sister's lady in waiting, Marissa, entered. Something was wrong with her entirely. Her usual bubbly personality was instead replaced with lifeless eyes and red tinted cheeks. Her expression was ridden with sorrow as she let out a shaky breath before parting her lips. I sucked in my breath. She was gone. I looked down to my fingers and began to pull off every piece of loose skin and hangnail I could possibly find. I just needed a distraction from the next coming words.

"I'm so sorry, princess. Your sister has passed."

Time seemed to stand completely still. My skin felt hot and itchy as a prickly sensation in the back of my eyes began. My heart hammered against my chest and I became hyper aware of what was happening in my own body. I could hear my blood flowing in my veins as I tried to drown out Marisa's words entirely. After some time, I couldn't tell if she was still in my room or if she had given up on me. My breathing became shallow as I grasped the silk blankets draped over my legs. I couldn't believe what I was told. Alina, the eldest heir and next in line to the throne, was gone. Not temporarily gone, but gone gone. Dead gone. I couldn't believe it. I replayed the events of the past month. Balls, tea parties, dinners with neighboring Kingdoms...it didn't make sense. No one else besides my family had fallen ill. She couldn't have caught an illness from a different Kingdom. If there were any outbreaks in plagues or other kinds of diseases, we would've been told. And she surely wasn't poisoned. I knew my mother drank the same tea she did, and she was the last Darrow to become sick. And yes, Alina wasn't the nicest person out there, but she didn't have any enemies...not to my knowledge at least. I had so many questions running through my mind that I became so lost in thought. I didn't even notice anyone was sitting in front of me until I felt a hand on my shoulder, bringing me back to reality. I looked up and saw a man dressed in all black royal attire. It took my eyes a bit but I soon realized it was my father. King Rowan.