Page 1 of A Courage of the Chosen

Prologue

Ten thousand years ago

The place she had chosen to die was idyllic. The cavern was half-open to the elements, and a large oak tree was perfectly centered next to the pool of water that flowed down from the frozen caps of the mountain.

This was their place. Their sacred hollow, that had brought forth the very best things about her.

The tiny village just beyond this cavern was where she’d met the love of her life, the father of her child. They’d married beneath the branches of this tree, and bonded their souls for all eternity with nothing but the spirits as witnesses.

His broken, lifeless body flashed in front of her eyes before she could stop it, and she screwed her lids closed as though she could shove the vision out of her mind. She refused to taint so many happy memories with the last time she saw him—holding him as his life bled away while she pleaded with fate not to tear them apart.

Their love was not destined to span a lifetime. It was a shooting star that burned brightly across the night sky of her existence, the echoes of it so candescent that it warmed her. Embers of it remained, even after everything she had suffered. They came in the form of the small girl with her father’s smile, and her own eyes, that had been passed down through each generation in her family. She birthed her perfect daughter in the safety of this cavern, too.

Every life-changing moment had happened for her here, the good and the bad. Far beneath where she knelt, a cave lay in ruins where she had discovered every member of her family flayed open, their power stolen from them. When she stepped foot into that space and witnessed those horrors, her heart was shredded apart. A fragment of it lay with each of them, now nothing but ashes buried deep below the surface.

The war had taken so much from her. And there was one final thing she had left to give.

Her life.

To save this world from the darkness ravaging it, to save her daughter and her people, she knew what needed to be done.

There was only ever one place that she would want to rest.

She brought his body with her to be entombed here, a beautiful place for them to spend forever. The dutiful guards stand sentry in the now-empty village, where he was laid to rest in the sarcophagus etched with the story of their lives together. They’ll prevent anyone getting closer to either of them. No one would reside there again. She had seen to that. It was theirs, it always would be, and she planned to be buried here with him.

“Mama?” Her daughter’s small voice was almost enough to halt what was about to happen.

“Come here, my sweet girl.” She opened her eyes and her arms as the tiny body hurtled forward.

“Where’s Papa?” The child’s voice quivered as though she already knew the answer.

She looked down at her daughter, seeing her husband in the button of her nose, and the shape of her eyes that were as green as her own.

“He’s safe,” was all she had the strength to share.

The elderly woman who had taken such good care of her daughter hovered on the edges of this moment, a look of deep sadness etched into the wrinkles of her face. Pained knowledge sat beneath it. She knew that she was witnessing the last moment this small girl would hold her mother.

In doing so, the weight of a crown would fall on her young head. She would have to mature before her time, and be forced to do things that would steal her childhood away, shaping the woman she would become.

“I need you to listen to me now.” A mother spoke to her daughter around the emotion that thickly lined her throat. “I cannot go with you. There is something I must do that will take me away. Know that if there was any other way, I would fight until my last breath for it. But the fate of the worlds is at stake, and I will not risk your future. It is a lot to ask of you, my darling, but you need to bury what happened. Those who know what truly occurred are dead, the secret needs to remain with those who cannot speak.”

The girl peeled away from her mother’s chest and looked up with tears clinging to her lashes.

“You will need to be strong.”

Her daughter nodded, a determined look falling across her fair, beautiful features. A look that had more tears cascading down the woman’s cheeks.

She really was the best of them. She would be a strong queen, and see the rebuilding of this world.

The girl stood before her kneeling mother so they were eye to eye, a small hand cupping her face to wipe away the tears that fell freely.

Tears for her lost love.

Tears for her people, who wouldn’t see the light of another day.

Tears for herself.

She nuzzled into her daughter’s warmth, knowing it would be the last time. She would not get to see her child grow. She would not be with her to guide her through life and love. That would fall to someone else.