Blood Dynasty

Tab 1 CHAPTER ONE: The Day I Died Believing Him The floor of the throne room had been cold. I knew because my cheek was pressed against it and I couldn't move. I could feel the stone beneath me, smooth and hard, no matter how much I tried to move I just couldn't. I had always thought if I was going to die it would be on a battlefield. Sword in hand, boots in the mud, going down in the middle of something worth dying for. Not there on polished stone under golden chandeliers, wearing a silk dress I never asked for, in a room full of beautiful things that were never mine. Bleeding from a gun that had been pointed at me by my own husband. That was not how I had planned to die. Funny how wrong you could be about your own ending. I could see Seraphine from where I was lying. She was standing in the far corner like a statue. She was watching me with those flat grey eyes of hers and there was nothing in them. Not guilty, or fear, not even remorse or pity. She just stood there watching me like she was trying to make sure I wasn't alive. She had hated me from the first day I walked into that court. I had known that. I felt it every time she looked at me, every time she answered a question I directed at Darius, every time she arranged something in that palace without telling me, without asking me, without even pretending I had any say. I told myself it was jealousy. I told myself she would come around. I told myself a lot of things in that palace that turned out to be nothing but stories I needed to believe so I could keep going. I heard footsteps moving towards my body. It was Darius, my husband. He crouched down in front of me slowly, like he had all the time in the world. He looked at me with nothing but relief in his eyes, he was supposed to be grieving me or at least pretending to. But I think maybe he was done pretending. If anyone had told me my husband would be the one to kill me I would have slapped them in the face and called them a liar but here I was laying on the floor in a pool of my own blood, helpless and weak. Darius rubbed my hands gently. The word he said to me before he pulled the trigger kept ringing in my head as I tried to suppress the pain in my chest. “ Mara you are no longer useful” Six words delivered in the same voice he had used to propose peace to me on that battlefield, the same voice that told me we could build something together, that the war had gone on long enough, that my people deserved better and he was the one who could give it to them. I had believed him. That was the part that was going to follow me to my grave. I had led the human rebellion for six years. I had been on the front lines before I was twenty. I watched people I loved get buried in the mud and I kept standing because they needed someone to keep standing. I was not soft. I was not careless. I was the kind of person other people trusted with their lives and their children and their last hope, and I took that seriously in a way that cost me sleep and peace and years off my life. And then a wolf came to me with a pretty speech and I handed him everything, I gave him my life and my people's life too. I trusted the wrong man. The darkness crept in from the edges of my vision, slow and heavy, and I couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop any of it. All I could see were faces. The people who had laid their weapons down because I told them to. The human settlements that never actually improved no matter how many agreements were signed, and I kept explaining it away, kept saying these things took time, kept asking everyone to be patient just a little longer. The meetings yielded no good results. The promises that were never kept. The slow and quiet way my people had been pushed further and further to the edges of the new world while I stood in the throne room wearing silk and calling myself Luna. I had seen the signs, I just ignored them. I should have known. The way Darius's eyes went flat sometimes when he talked about the humans. The way decisions were made without me. The way Seraphine always seemed to know things before I did. I guess a part of me always knew that he was working towards the peace of my people, he was working for his own greed. I couldn't fix it. I couldn't get up. I couldn't do anything except lie on that cold floor and feel the weight of every decision I had made that led me there. I watched as he walked away with Seraphine by his side, they looked at me for a while before leaving. The bullet was still inside my body, he shoot my legs so standing up at the moment was pretty impossible.. He also shot my back too so only a matter of time before I died. I whispered a silent prayer before closing my eyes to let the darkness take over. I could hear someone's voice, it sounded distant but I could still hear it, she was screaming for help. Maybe one of the maids saw my lifeless body and started calling out for help. I let the darkness take over And at that moment I made a promise to myself. I would never hand my trust to someone just because I wanted the thing they were offering to be real. I would never again mistake wanting peace for wanting control. I would not be useful to anyone who had not earned the right to use me. I would not smile at a wolf and call it safety. And if I survive this I will make sure Darius suffers