Excerpt: I Killed the King

Let us start with a struggle. Two kingdoms, balanced on the righteous grounds of familial bonding, shared within in them two kings who were brothers. The first kingdom, named by their father, was Pride. It was ruled by the first brother who took a wife of gracious beauty and courageous intellect. She bore her king a daughter and died in birth with only the child’s name on her lips.

Tala.

The second kingdom belonged to the next brother, who won his kingdom a queen from a far away land. She bore him a son and died in birth before his name could pass her lips. The king, sick with grief, could not suitably label his first born son without the mother’s consent, and left the child nameless.

He was known simply as Prince.

Three days after Tala’s birth the first king went into battle to prove his worth as a ruler. His sword held majestically in the air, his valiant fists wrapped tightly in furious anger and pity, he succumbed to an arrow, piercing his royal armour and further wounding his already broken heart.

He died on the battlefield, grateful to his deity that he would see his wife once again.

It was the second brother who inherited all the first king had left behind. His castle became a second home, his kingdom a large playing grounds for his son. And as for the daughter? She became his as well; living in the kingdom of Knowledge until the day she would marry a Prince and reclaim her rights as the Queen of Pride.

And one day Tala did fall in love. But her love was not one shared with a Prince...