10/18/2022
This is the Origins story of Cinder, the main character of Rose & Glass, a full length novel published with Isekai Publishing in early 2024.
Cinder once was stripped of his name and identity, before he was old enough to understand them. Kicked, beaten and nearly starved, Cinder is just another subservient orphan to be tossed aside. His step-mother has stolen everything from him, while he only knows poverty. But, he has a secret. The malevolent presence deep inside his head, wants out. And when that happens, terrible violence explodes, to destroy everything in its path. When the presence leaves him abandoned, he is chased by royal guard, plunged into the realm of the fae worlds. Farther than any human dared go. Murky waters transcend, leaving the orphan in a precarious power struggle that predates his birth. The Prince of Roses is coming, and Cinder will have no recourse. Now, it’s all a matter of time.
OFFICIAL EXCERPT
Prologue
I’m afraid you’re barren, Lady Royce.
The words rolled in Lady Ada Royce’s head, like the glass marbles she knew the groundskeeper made for the local schoolhouse.
She watched the river beyond her garden, as she felt the life leave her heart with every hollow beat. The gentle lapping against the peddles usually soothed her. Not this day.
Children’s delighted laughter floated through the woods. They appeared, sticks in hand, and battled each other. The clatter of wood on wood, coupled with their joy and exuberance for life mingled with her melancholy.
She forced her gaze from the playing, to stare at the battlements and towers atop the Kingdom of Rhoswen. The late afternoon cast the iridescent stone of the castle gleamed, awash with fiery orange and deep rose quartz rays of the setting sun. The Inner City loomed. The Rhoswen castle lay surrounded by majestic townhouses and government buildings. Trees dotted every available corner, alongside murals and ancient statues of deities almost forgotten, among most places on the Eloselle Continent. People roamed the city, going about their days. They closed up shops to return home, to their loving families. Their adorable children.
Lady Ada Royce placed a hand over her aching heart. Her pulse clanged in her ears, heightening her sorrows. The doctor's words from the clinic shrieked in her mind, as the children’s laugher grew louder the closer they ventured.
I'm afraid you're barren, Lady Royce.
How could it be? How was it possible? Such a cruel irony, to make her barren while she wanted nothing more than a baby of her own, to coddle him and cherish, to watch him grow into a man.
Ada felt it in every fiber of her being. She was born to be a mother. Her entire family was flourishing with notable fertility. Everyone, from her husband’s family, plus her own had always commented on her motherly disposition. The ladies in court always assured her. During her time as a noblewoman, she cared for the young of every maid, stableman, and cook in both her household and those of her friends and relatives alike. And now, to be denied the one thing that meant the most to her, and her noble status!
Why had the gods taken away her only wish?
Per the archaic law of the land, her husband could shun her at his leisure! The law clearly stated that women should test their fertility before marriage, particularly in nobility. Otherwise, the article read she would die, before her husband. She passed that dueling exercise with the doctor and priest. Yet, none of that would matter now. They had made the choice, apparently wrong as it were. It was her head on the block for the crime.
But, would her betrothed do that to her? Had he not always been kind? Except his absolute resolve to have a son.
How could she tell her husband?
She bent over, tears welling. They spilled only once or twice. Her mind whirled, turning over the facts and trying to come up with any other result. She clenched her eyes as hard as she did her fists.
A high-pitched cry escaped from her throat, sobs racking her fragile frame.
"My dear lady." An elderly voice floated through Ada’s despair, seeping through the hell she found herself in. “Sorrow saturates you, and it ails me to see you as such.”
Ada grappled with her emotions that wreaked havoc on her psyche. One feeling at a time, she leashed them, pulling them back to a box, similar to which all nobility and royalty alike kept hidden inside. Well, the successful ones, that was.
She looked up, then gasped. An old woman, dressed in a dusty, patched cloak, stared at her from beneath a deep hood. Her round, soft face with kind, blue eyes was framed in unbound silvery white hair. Her gnarled wooden cane was clasped tightly, with long, skeletal fingers.
When Ada didn’t say anything, the hag shuffled slow, toward the bench the Lady Ada sat upon.
“I have become the definition of melancholy,” Ada whispered. Her bitterness was plain as the setting sun.
The world darkened around them, as the sun hid behind the tallest tower of the castle. Ada couldn’t distinguish much of the older woman’s face. Her features constantly shifted, but so slow, one didn’t notice right away.
The woman said nothing, and the yawning silence grated on Ada’s already aggravated nerves.
“I’ve heard some bad news, and I don’t know how to tell my husband.” The words tumbled out from her mouth.
"May I ask what this bad news is?" the old woman inquired. "It might solace your heart to share with me. I won't tell anyone, for there is no one for me to tell. I live in the forest, far from here. I only come on an errand."
Ada bit her lip in indecision. The emotions crept back into the forefront of her mind, like countless rose stems, engorged with thorns that stole deep inside the flesh, taking over. She had to say it aloud. To someone.
"My husband and I have been trying for a child for the longest time. We kept failing. This very morning, I went to the physician.”
Ada slapped a hand over her mouth. Fat tears fell from her eyes.
A wrinkled hand touched her shoulder. “It’s okay, child. I feel your fear, keen as my own.”
“I’m barren,” Ada gushed. Then laughed, as if she lost her mind. It sounded more like a raven’s caw. Haggard and soulless.
"I have striven for one thing. To become a mother to a darling son who would grow up to a strapping man, just like his father. I love my husband. More than anything in the realm. And he too adores children.”
"It may not be too late. Yet," the hag replied. Her frail hand left Ada’s shoulder and dipped back into her robe.
For a split second, the shifting features of the woman’s face stilled. Ada observed a wickedly hooked nose, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. The yellow in her eyes reminded Ada of a wild cat. They reflected oddly in the low illumination, as twilight descended upon them.
The hag produced a glistening red vial from her cloak. Ada gasped at the sight of it, her eyes widening. The contents shimmered, as if garnets and rubies have been crushed into a liquid.
The hag’s smile darkened a few degrees of brightness. Her features began to shifting again, but a sense of clouded uncertainty bled through Ada.
"This is a remedy for infertility. Drink this before you make love to your husband tonight, and you shall conceive a child,” the woman murmured.
To Ada, the hag’s whisper-thin words might as well have been a shout.
"How can I trust you?" Ada’s hands ached as she clenched the vial in her lap, trying her hardest to refrain from snatching the potion from the hag’s hand. “I have just met you.”
"I have no intention of harming you, child. I am your faery godmother," she said.
The elderly woman’s facade vanished. The wrinkles smoothed out, just as her lips filled into a perfect cupid’s bow. Dull, grey hair turned into luscious raven locks. The yellow in her eyes intensified into a crystal azure.
In the space of a breath, gossamer wings sprouted from her back. A fine canary yellow dust clung to the translucent tone of the periwinkle blue.
Fear turned Ada’s blood to ice, chilling the bones and lifting her skin in gooseflesh. Fae creatures were forbidden to set foot in the human kingdoms. The Accords stated as such! However, the fae came and went as they pleased, disregarding the rules. Law stated that any human who was found to be having any sort of relations with a fae creature, would face lifelong imprisonment.
Or even death.
As if sensing Ada’s trepidation, the hag spoke. "I only want what is the best for you. If that is a babe, then a child you shall have." She crouched next to a frozen Ada and placed the vial on her lap. "This favor of the fae comes with one condition."
Ada had started to grab the potion, but paused, just a second before her hand touched it. “And that is?”
Dealing with the fae was akin to dealing with death, but Ada was already in the crosshairs of the bow. What more could she lose? Nobody here to witness the bargain. She was perfectly safe.
“Once the child is born, you must name me as his faery godmother.”
Ada’s throat dried.
“My mother told me tales once…a long time ago.” Ada tried to not let hope steal her heart. Not yet. Or, maybe? Could she? “That—that on the other side of the border.” She hiccupped. “Of Rhoswen, deep into the forest, lived the fae.” Ada tried to maintain her breathing, and her noble bearing. “Every once in a while, they would come to risk their very lives. But, only for the purest of hearts. No matter the laws that tried to keep them away, the fae cannot resist such calls to their duty.” Ada finished and felt she had control of her emotions once again.
She never believed, not even when she was seven-years-old. Surely the fae wouldn’t risk death just so they could grant wishes to humans. Their existence made Ada wary. Stories old as time. Besides, no one who went to the forest came back.
Despite it all, Lady Ada Royce, having no guile, and the sweetest disposition, had a godmother.
A faery godmother?
“Why did you choose me?” Ada hated looking a gift horse in the mouth, but suspicion was still deeply rooted her mind, sowing the seeds of distrust. Her time at court, surrounded by other nobility had taught her caution. The hope still grew, but tamer now. More digestible.
The faery laughed. A tinkling sound that held all the world’s joy in it. Ada felt lulled by the laugh, and though she might become drunk because of it. Her feelings of negativity flowed away with the breeze. Why had she been so sad? Why was she distrustful? The accords were ancient, they didn’t carry the same weight they did back in the day. Faeries were not all that evil as the officials wanted them to believe. How could they be, when one of them was willing to gift her so? The faery was willing to risk her own life to save hers.
Ada plucked the vial from her lap and cradled it to her bosom with both hands. As if, she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t find it inside herself to stop. A tiny fraction of her recalled another part from her mother’s tales. Faeries possessed glamor. And that magic was old as time, and just as deadly.
Ada breathed in, then the thought disappeared. The lady was elated, excited.
“Thank you,” she told the faery. “Thank you so much, godmother. For I shall never forget this, as long as I live. I will so as you say.”
Her own voice sounded foreign in her ears. Surely, it must be gratitude that’s making her sound so odd.
The faery godmother grinned, “The pleasure is all mine, my child.”
It never bothered Ada that the smile lacked any sign of happiness.
