Darkened Outcast

Prologue:

A baby lay in a midnight blue cradle. Unwanted. A nuisance to its owners. Pushed away from its royal destiny beside its father into the arms of his poor, young, vulnerable mother. In a happier time, that exact baby would sit on this mother's knee, a mother who was not yet broken by the death of his father. A mother who still loved him. A mother who still cared. A brooding mask carrying wrinkles and scars had now settled on that beautiful girl, laying across her young, stormy eyes, like a dark cloud, towed by the winds of hatred and jealousy, quenching the fire of hope in her heart. She told stories. The mother would marvel at these stories, stories of function and order in her dying world.