I wrote a partial opening for a book, and I just want to gauge potential interest. :)Ā
I remember the first time I tasted magic. I was a child, a sprightly little thing, my legs beanpoles and my hair tucked back behind large ears. He was with me in the meadow, the spring blooms of yellow and blues and purples tickling our hands as we brushed past them, sprinting for the large weeping willow, our sanctuary from the bustling village.
He took my hands in his, his autumn eyes dancing as he told me in rushed whispers that he had been blessed. I remember the twinge of jealousy that sparked in my young heart, for I had no such blessing, but smiled and congratulated him nonetheless.
He unleashed it then, a small tendril of the looming power underneath his skin, and the acrid, burnt taste it left on the air intoxicated my senses. His gift was wind, as untethered and wild as he, and the image of him in the meadow, his black hair whipping around his head as his breeze surrounded us burns on the back of my eyelids even now.
He was gone a few days later, as was customary in those times. The Queenās Guard came for him in the night and snatched him from his bedchambers, leaving his mother weeping and his sisters stricken with fright. I remember thinking how magic couldnāt be a blessing, then, if it destroyed families.
My mother scolded me for such thoughts, and impressed upon me that I was too young to understand the laws of the land.
I am older now, and yet I still do not understand.
I didnāt understand when my own magic surfaced from the well where it slumbered within me, its emergence sending forth a wildfire that encompassed acres of forest around my village. I didnāt understand when, at the age of fourteen, I was shackled and thrown into the back of the black carriage of the Guard, gagged to keep myself from screaming the whole way to the palace. I didnāt understand when I was forced to my knees before the Queen and coerced into signing my life away to her service.
It is a cruel world, magic. As entertaining as the idea is, the reality is much worse than I ever imagined.
It has been ten years now since I have joined the (insert faction name here), and the atrocities I have committed in the name of the Queen are weights on my soul. But I have no choice but to continue on.
Or, at least, that is what I thought.
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