heartless ; 𝐭. 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐤 , 𝟏

prologue

IT WAS RAINING when they came for her. When they killed her parents.

The day before was for preparing. The day that would follow was the most dreaded day of the young girl's life. She found this fact mildly amusing, as it was always Sundays that caused her the most uneasiness because those were the Holy days. The days of 1572 weren't what she would call progressive in terms of religious freedom.

Protestants like her and her parents were never safe, it seemed. Even though the wars between the Catholics and Huguenots had broken out when she was just two, her parents always reminded her that the tension had been building for years prior.

"Les guerres viennent peut-être de commencer, ma chérie, mais la haine était déjà là," her père warned her on nights like these. The wars may have just begun, my dear, but the hatred was already there.

She supposed this was true, based on the general consensus of the large group surrounding her. Most of the Protestants left in France were men who had had enough of les complots and schemes of Catherine d' Medici, the controlling and seemingly immortal mother of King Charles IX. The royal line had always spoken of religious freedom in their country and promised its citizens that while Catholicism was the preferred faith of the Royals, any daughter of France was welcome to pursue the faith that she desired.

Of course, French royalty was especially known for its slippery way of manipulating the past to shape the future. When a German monk called Martin Luther renounced the ways of the Catholic Church in 1517, any thought of religious freedom was dismissed to be a figment of a person's imagination. Catholicism was declared the official religion of France, and any practice other than that of the French court was considered heresy of the highest order. What was once considered a strong suggestion by the king was now a direct order, one which was punishable by hanging if disobeyed.

The young girl shivered despite the warm summer breeze that rustled the many layers of her skirts. "Maman?" She asked, searching the growing crowd of Huguenots for her mother. "Où êtes-vous allé?" Ducking around a small group of men who were praying in hushed voices, their words slurring together so fast that they were unrecognizable, the girl anxiously turned her head back and forth, waiting to find her parents.

"Jacqueline, there you are," her father called from somewhere behind her, weaving through the dirty skirts and pants of the working class French men and women that had gathered that night. "The service is about to start, where have you been?"

She looked up at her father and furrowed her eyebrows. "I didn't move, Papa. I stayed right where you told me to." She crossed her arms and huffed, "It was you who left me."

Her father's gray eyes sparkling in the moonlight, she saw him reach out for her and envelope her in his grasp. "Oh, ma chérie, I would never leave you. You know that, don't you?" He peered into his daughter's eyes, pride swelling in his chest at the way she smiled at him, utterly and completely trusting in him.

When the young girl nodded, she released her father and took his hand, following his lead as they took their place in the dark cellar of her house where the others were waiting.

The Protestant movement, even in such a small village as hers, had to congregate in secret every week, often in the middle of the night and at different places. Jacqueline's father had offered up their small house as the next location for the Saturday service, admitting that while the cellar was less-than-satisfactory, it would hold enough people to compose a well-lit service for them. So, the day before had been spent preparing the space to hold the maximum amount of people it could. Jacqueline and her mother, despite the scandalized looks from the farmers that lived nearby, loaded all of the vegetables and stored goods into the far corners of the cellar and cleared as much space as absolutely possible for the gathering the following night.