To be King...

Prologue: Attacked in the Woods

  The sky held no answers for what would happen that day. It was just after sunrise, the sky streaked grey and blue(), the cold winter nipping at the noses of two children who called to the man just behind them.

"Your going too slow da!" The younger called, laughing and swinging her hand that was twined with her sister's. Her blonde hair was tucked under a cap, keeping her older sister from retaliating when she pulled her long brown locks.

"I'm an old man with creaky joints! Don't worry, I'll still beat you there!" The man calls, racing up next to them, boots crunching brittle leaves, brown eyes dancing with mirth.

The two girls squeal with laughter, taking off just in front of him, the younger sister being pulled along, her eyes matching her father's. Soon enough they stop near a clearing, panting and red faced and smiling. Their father lumbers up behind them, leaning against a tree and panting lightly, a smile on his face as he watches his daughters talk about a sleepover they had at the infamous Cabot Castle. He catches snippets of their whispers and giggles.

"Nate said Seff and and Darci will be home soon." The older girl says, almost anxious.

"Why haven't we met them?" the younger asks. A shrug, and soon they are onto the next topic about their closest friend and newest exploits.

When the sun crests, the warm rays finally filtering through the cold air, he starts the lesson, as he has so many times before.

"But dad!" his oldest daughter pouts, "I want Nate to come with us next time!"

"Nate isn't one of us. He's a nice young man, yes, your best friend even, but he wouldn't understand any of this." They've had this talk several times if the way the younger girl was mouthing along with her father was any indication, but the older girl still sulked as she lowered herself to the ground, sitting back to back with that of her sister.

The wind around them seemed to quiet as the breathing of the two girls fall into sync. The creases of concentration on their faces disappear one by one as they relax into the space around them.

"Just feel. Feel the way the wind moves and the earth breathes." Their father's voice barely registers in their minds, but the wind seems to intensify around their pocket of quiet. Blonde and brunette hair whip around their faces, getting mixed up in the breeze. Small fingers clench in the dirt or strain the grass with a tug.

These are old elements that they have been working on for nearly a year, and soon their father will let them start on the other elements, the more volatile and emotional ones. For now, they are content to reach out to their familiar elements and stretch their tendrils of developing magic into the natural spaces of the wind and the earth. There are so many things to learn, and their father promised to teach them everything he knew, promised that one day they could tell their mother and perhaps spend a summer at their grandmother's coven. He promised to protect them, but it is they who cannot protect him.
They can feel the shift in the earth at each unnaturally fast footstep toward them, feel the push the body makes against the wind, can make out the shape of a man, maybe a boy, and all of a sudden a snap and thud pull them out of their trance.

A body, still warm but no longer breathing, lays on the ground, facing them. The face, blank and grey, is unmistakable. It's their father.

A sob works it's way up from the older girl, but a scream pulls her away from the glassy, dead eyes of her father. Someone is dragging her sister away, arm around her throat, easily moving her through the trees. Not thinking, not breathing, she follows. She runs until her lungs burn and keeps running, grabbing the person around the neck and ripping him away from her sister. He mustn't have been prepared for her because it's too easy to pull them apart and his supernatural strength radiates from his aura. There is blood on his face and he hisses at her like a wild animal while her sister bleeds on the ground behind her.

She shakes and cries, readies herself for a fight if need be, but his body crashes into hers with the force of a speeding car and her head hits a rock, blood and tears blurring her vision. His fangs latch onto her neck as he growls like a wild animal and she cries and screams for help, for her father, thrashing underneath him and trying to free herself.

He's ripped from her much in the way she ripped him from her sister, leaving long gashes where his teeth sunk into her skin and tore. This time she cannot make out the figure, head pounding too hard to see anything but blurs. She sees them clashing, their bodies colliding, wild noises coming from them, and she crawls. Body aching beyond belief, heart racing, lungs gasping, she crawls to the lump that is her sister, looking small and fragile on the ground.

She's shaking. It's a tiny movement, almost imperceptible, but she can feel it when she covers the smaller body with her own. Closing her eyes, she waits for death. Instead she gets a lukewarm hand on her cheek and a voice rumbling what she can only assume is her name. Her eyes blink open, but through the pain and the blood she can't make much out. A shape of a person, a masculine voice, the siren's far off on the road.

"Adira, don't move, help is almost here." She's never heard that voice before, and curls tighter around her little sister.

"Adira?" the voice asks again, but it's almost as if cotton is filling her head, blocking her ears and clogging her mouth.

"Adira? Stay with me. Adira?" and the voice fades into a distant hum as the world implodes around her.

"Adira?" It feels like seconds later, but her muscles are stiff and she has a plastic bit in her nose. Her fingers are cold and her eyes stick together, but she gets them open and looks at the person holding her hand.

"Mom?" she whispers, voice hoarse.

"Oh baby, my little girl." her mother nearly sobs, throwing her arms around her and holding her close. She can't be sure what her mother is mumbling to her, but she doesn't have the will to ask what she is saying. Once her mother finally pulls away, wiping tears from her hazel eyes, she finds the voice to ask the only thing on her mind.

"Did Will make it?" and by the look on her mother's face, she knows what has become of her little sister.

AN: I've edited this story to death and no one has ever read it, so here it goes, after it's 4th revision. Please, let me know what you think. Update might be a little slow, but I have the next chapter written, and I'll try and post every Saturday!