Part One
“Their father, who was king over the whole country, married a wicked queen, who did not treat his poor children at all well.”
Prologue
BELLAMY
My earliest memory was frolicking through the Wilds. It was not a place a young child should frolic, but I’d grown up in the Wilds, and it was as much a part of me as I was a part of it. It was all I knew.
I wasn’t scared of the trees with eyes or the towering plants that would eat you should you come too close. I didn’t fear the lake that told of your future or the tall reeds that would drug you with their intoxicating scent. I’d learned how to survive in the Wilds.
But on one particular day, when I was just five years old, I’d been foolish. My father had told me I must stay in the castle that morning. I was to study with my older brother Phoenix. He was teaching me my letters. Letters that I didn’t care about. Not when I could do much more fun things like swing on a vine into a clear pond near our home.
So while my brothers were having their magic lessons with Father, I snuck out of the abandoned castle we’d made intoour home after the fall of the star court and ran to my favorite swinging spot.
Only on that day, I didn’t anticipate the dangers that lay in the Wilds. Although I’d learned most of them, some still remained enigmas. Some were still a weakness to me.
I frolicked through the reeds that emitted a lavender haze that would drug anyone who didn’t know the reeds’ secrets. As long as you didn’t step on them, they wouldn’t drug you. The haze was only a defense mechanism. I ran my fingers through the reeds, eyeing the tall trees in the distance that crowded around the pond where I liked to swim. It was one of the only ponds in the Wilds that didn’t have monsters lurking under the surface.
The stars twinkled in the twilight sky overhead, ribbons of green threading through the purple, lighting the world temporarily with an emerald hue.
Sometimes I would lay among the reeds and imagine what life must’ve been like before the star court had been destroyed.
I imagined the villages, the star elementals. I imagined what it would be like to have other children to play with instead of monsters. My father and brothers told me stories of the star court, what it was like before everything had been destroyed, before most of the elementals had been killed, before the ones who survived had been cursed and turned into the monstrous creatures that now roamed the Wilds.
Thankfully, my father and brothers had been spared from the curse, and so had I, since I’d been in my mother’s belly, protected from it all, born after the damage had been done.
I neared the line of tall trees, the eyes set in their trunks swiveling toward me, watching as I approached.
“It’s just me,” I said to them.
The reeds rustled, and I paused. My father and brothers had taught me to notice the signs of danger, had taught me what todo should I encounter a monster I couldn’t fight against in the Wilds.
A cat-like creature emerged from the reeds. Purple fur sprouted along her entire body, orange stripes slashing through the fur. I recognized her instantly. My mother. Or, more accurately, the woman who’d birthed me. She couldn’t be called a mother. She had been. Once. To my brothers. They told me wonderful stories about her. But while they’d been spared from the curse, she had not, turning into one of the monstrous creatures who now roamed the Wilds. Shortly after she’d given birth to me, she disappeared, and that was that.
“What are you doing out here all alone, little girl?” she asked as she circled me, her yellow eyes bright with excitement.
I raised my chin. “I’m not alone.”
“Really?” She smiled, flashing her sharp teeth. “And who’s with you?”
I spread my arms. “The hazy reeds. The seeing trees.” I pointed behind her.
Her smile grew wider. “Ah. Where are your father and brothers?”
“Back at the castle,” I said airily. “They don’t know I snuck out.”
“Mm,” she said. “That’s an interesting piece of information. Where are you headed, little girl?”
“It’s Bellamy.” My nose wrinkled. I didn’t like being called a little girl. My brothers treated me too much like one, so protective all the time. I wanted to be big like them.
She made a choking sound, like the name offended her.
“And I’m headed to Crystal Pond. To swing off the vines and swim.”
Her tail twitched. She finally stopped circling, coming to a stand in front of me.
Whiskers stuck out from her cheeks, black and pointy. I wondered if she saw something of me in her former self. My black hair, my brown eyes, my pale skin. My angular face. Did any of it look familiar to her? I’d inherited my father’s wild black hair, but I’d been told my brown eyes were similar to hers.
