Synopsis

A Chapter by TheBlueJay

It has been agreed upon by the council and every tutor I have ever had that I was born six years too late and with entirely the wrong set of skills. My father thought that I would be the downfall of his kingdom and that he would regret the day of birth. I just never knew how true that statement was until the night I lost everything, including my name.

I was born in the warming season four years after my half-sister and ten years after the coronation of King Emerson Bartholemew Zacharis Brentwood-Wittaker. On the night of my birth, my father did not claim me as his heir or his daughter. He took one look at my eyes and believed that I would grow up a child of magic. Unfit, to be royal. Unfit to be his heir. Unfit to live.

For the first year of my life, it is said that my mother was never seen with me. Which seems about right, given in the nine years that followed she rarely spoke to me or acknowledged my existence.

My nurse was the one who held me to ensured that I lived. When I grew ill with Creanta not a single member of my family visited me. It was as if they believed that I could pass my eyes on to them. When I grew well again, and my hair had changed color, as the disease has always done. That is the first time my father held me and called me his child, though I was still not to be the true heir.

Against all tradition, my mother was not present at my naming day. She declined to claim me as her own blood, so my sister was called as my next closest female relative to name me. She was five years of age and it was the first time she had ever seen me, but she did not gasp at my strange eyes, inside she simply smiled and named me Rosabell. Tradition dictated the rest of my name, so I became known as Princess Rosabell Isadora Octavia Aspen Whittaker-Brentwood.

For the next six years of my life, my sister was my father’s favorite and my only companion. She was seen at every court event. Her golden hair a stark contrast to his darker hair. She was not known publicly as a princess, only a high Nobleborn favored by the King. She would dance with all the right people and talk in all the correct ways.

Which afforded me time to wander away. To slip away from parties with only my guardsman at my back. It only took me a few weeks to find all of the tunnels in the castle. My explorations and desire to leave the castle was the only thing that saved us that night.