The Knight's Princess

Chapter 9

"What did you say?"

"You heard me mother!" "Why would you take my memories away"

The queen was stunned at Azaria's outburst. She tried to speak, but couldn't form the words. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She knew that this day would come; however she still wasn't prepared.

"Well mother, aren't you going to explain?" She shot up an eyebrow.

"Don't speak to your mother that way"

The king interjected.

"I understand that you're upset, but she is still your mother and queen of this kingdom"

"How can you sit there and defend her?" Azaria shouted.

As Azaria's anger grew her body started to glow and heat up. Everyone started to back up away from her in fear. The king ran over to Azaria and grabbed her hand to try to control the situation.

"Azaria, please , you need to calm down" The king pleaded.

"Don't tell me what I need to do"

Azaria shot a forcefield blast and sent the king flying into the wall. The queen and the doctor rushed to the king's side to see if he was ok. Azaria snapped out of it and realized what she had done and was in shock.

"Father," she called. "I - I'm so sorry".

She didn't understand what was happening to her. Meanwhile the doctor gave a nurse a silent signal to inject the princess with a sedative. So the nurse came from behind and gave Azaria a shot of a sedative to calm her down and put her to sleep. Everyone slowly returned back to the room with fear and confusion running in their hearts. Nkosi saw that the king was on the floor and that the queen and doctor were struggling to help him to his feet. So he rushed over to lend a hand. Once the king was stable and able to stand on his own he ordered everyone but the queen to leave and they did just that. After everyone exited the room the King turned to face his Queen with such disappointment and anger in his eyes.

"Look at what you did!" Before the queen could respond he lifted his hand to stop her from saying a word.

"I told you hiding the truth from her was going to backfire and I was right and now our daughter is laying in the medical center heavily sedated."

Before the queen could interject once again the king stopped her from responding.

"You will fix this and tell our daughter the truth or so help me" and before he could finish the king just chose to walk away before he said something he was going to regret.

A few hours later Azaria started to wake up from the sedative waring off. She looks around while her head feeling some slight confusion til it dawns on her what she had done. She frantically tried to unhook her IVs and as she was reaching her right arm she felt a hand on her and looked to see it was her mother the queen. Seeing the queen sleep at her bedside made her furious till she saw that the queen's eyes were red and bit puffy and she realized that her mother was crying. Seeing that made her furious heart calm down. As Azaria gently wiped the tears from her mother's eyes the queen started waking up to see that Azaria also had finally woken up as well.

"Thank the goddess that you finally woke up"

The queen rushed in to hug Azaria but Azaria stopped her before getting too close.

"Why are you here mother?"

The queen looked at Azaria with sadness in her eyes and just slowly sat back down in her chair. Before answering Azaria's question Queen Nova first repositioned herself by pulling back her shoulders, fixing her crown, and taking a deep breath to calm her emotions.

"How are you feeling first?"

"Drained, hurt, confused all the things you would feel when you find out that you mother has been lying to you your whole life which makes me question if you gave a damn about me or your precious reputation"

After that statement Queen Nova stood up and her eyes began to glow. She looked at Azaria not as her daughter but as a subbordent. Using her power of authority she commanded Azaria to be silent.

She stared into Azaria's eyes and said "I may be your mother but I'm still the queen and wielder of the Amulet and you will respect me, do i make myself clear" Azaria nodded her head before her mother released her from powers of Authority.

"Now you need to rest and recover and when you are ready I want you to come to my office so I can tell you everything."

"Right now you are still unstable to handle any emotional triggers at this point."

"Yes mother"

Later that day Azaria was released from the medical center and headed back to her room to finish recovering. After a few days have gone by since Azaria and Queen Nova have spoken she decided to take her up on her offer and got ready to go see her mother to get the answers she was yearning for. While she was putting her up and around her tiara a knock on the door was heard. She walked over to see Nkosi standing in the doorway.

"Nkosi!" Azaria shouted in excitement.

Azaria jumped into Nkosi's arms needing to have a feeling of safety for her mental health. While she was in his arms Nkosi's face started to blush but he knew he couldn't let her see that. Once she released him from her grasped she pulled him into her room and urged him to sit next her.

"So what brings you here?"

"I'm here to check on you making sure that you were ok"

Azaria grabbed his hand to reassure him that he need not to worry and that she was ok.

"Azaria I failed you" Azaria scrunched up her nose and frowned her eyebrows in confusion.

"What are you talking about you failed me I'm not understanding"

"When you were in pain and not yourself I didn't know how I could protect you. I was supposed to protect you." "When I took that oath to always protect you I meant that"

"Don't beat yourself up Nkosi because it's not your fault you are doing a great job and you are protecting me by being here and giving me that sense of safety and reassurance that I will be ok and I just want to tell you thank you."

Azaria smiled which gave Nkosi a sign that he was honoring his oath to always be there and protect her. Once the two finished their conversation Azaria started heading to her mother's office so she could finally get some answers as to why

all this happened to her and what she was turning into.

Once Azaria reached Queen Nova's office she took a deep breath and before she could even knock the queen opened the door using her powers. Azaria looked with amazement before her mother urged her to take a seat in front of her desk.

"So I see you have recovered in more ways than one" Azaria nodded her head yes in response to the queen's statement.

"Where do you want me to start?"

"By telling me why did you take my memories away?" "What was so bad that you had to make a big decision like that?"

Queen Nova started to explain all that happened on that day and how Azaria came into her powers and how she lost control. She also told Azaria how her powers called the Goddess Sahar to the surface and that if she hadn't things could've been alot worse. For her powers can change the test of time.

"The energy from your powers was so overwhelming that it destroyed the ceiling of the temple, changed the atmosphere, and how you almost killed Nkosi"

That last part, almost killing Nkosi, her best friend in the whole wide world almost dying by her hands felt like a knife had stabbed her in the heart. She froze in her own thoughts having that image play over and over in her mind.

"Your powers were so out of control it took all my strength to reach out to the Goddess to plead with her to save you"

"I had to take your memories away from that day because as a ten year old child i didn't want that to burden your mind for you wouldnt have recovered from it and I am sorry"

As the Queen was continuing to explain everything to Azaria a loud explosion echoed down the halls. Azaria and Queen Nova rushed out of the office to see what was going on. They ran further down the hall when they see the guards running around, grabbing their weapons, getting into position etc. Queen Nova snatched up one of the guards to find out what just happened.

"Guard what just happened?"

"Your majesty we are under attack!"

"Who is attacking us?"

"I don't know my queen one minute everything was peaceful the next there was some black like fog that covered the entire ground of the castle and the next we know an explosion happened back to back"

Queen Nova let go of the guard and took Azaria's hand and pulled her to follow so they could find Naliyah and the King. Dodging more explosions and flying debris to see the king, Naliyah, and Nkosi. As they were making their way to each other some black like fog reached up into the castle walls. Nkosi halted everyone when a shadowy figure started appearing out the fog. It was wearing a black hooded robe that was shredded on the ends, no legs, it was floating around like a ghost, long skinny arms that were a light gray color with long dirty claws, and had no eyes, only a mouth with sharp teeth.

"Hello Your Majesties"

"Who are you, what do you want?" The King demanded.

"You have something that belongs to my master"

Before Nkosi could reach to pull out his sword the monster-like figure used his extreme speed to get in front of Nkosi picking him up off the ground and slamming him back into the ground so hard it made a whole in the floor. Azaria, Naliyah, the queen, and the king watched as they saw Nkosi badly hurt. From just that one single attack left him barely moving and barely breathing. Azaria and Naliyah stood frozen in fear wanting to run but for some reason they couldn't. As the monster was coming closer their parents yanked on the girls' arms and forced them to snap out of it and run. Queen Nova looked back to see the monster was closing in on them at a fast pace. The king stopped to hold it back but was thrown into the wall , knocking him out. Queen Nova paused to shoot a series of Light based arrows to slow the creature down long enough to

hide the girls.

"You two stay here don't come out til I have lured the monster far away enough for you girls to escape."

"No mom don't go; hide with us don't put your life in danger especially when you are with child" Naliyah pleaded.

"Don't argue with me"

Queen Nova used her power of Authority to make her daughters do as they were told and ran out of the room where the girls were hiding to lure the creature away. Due to Azaria's growing powers the effects of Power of Authority didn't last long and she disobeyed the Queen's orders to go fight the creature. Naliyah couldn't believe what just happened; Azaria reached down for her sister's hand but Naliyah couldn't shake the effects of Power of Authority for she was not as strong as Azaria and stead behind. Azaria ran all around to see the creature holding mom by the neck high in the air.

"Put her down!" Azaria shouted.

The creature turned towards Azaria smelling the Goddess's power emanating from her. He then knew she was the one he was looking for. He quickly dropped the queen and rushed towards Azaria to take what belonged to his master when the queen gathered herself and used her light magic to create a rope to latch on to the creature so he wouldn't get near Azaria. Before they can make their next move the creature uses his speed to sprint towards the queen, snatching her heart out of her chest and crushing it. Azaria looked at her mom and the unborn baby inside of her lying there not moving. The creature turned his head facing Azaria just to see a fire like ora resonating from her. Her eyes glowed a furious red and yellow mixture, and her entire body turned into energy from head to toe. The creature was afraid but it had a job to do. So it rushed in for a second attempt to take what belonged to his master; however before he could even get close Azaria let out a scream that would shake the heavens and a burst of power shot out in waves destroying the creature and the black like fog in one

fell swoop.

After letting out all that energy Azaria collapsed with her last vision before everything going dark was her mother lying there dead.