Chapter Text
Princess Alina lived a charmed life, blessed with beauty, intelligence, kindness, wealth and good luck.
The people of the kingdom adored her and they praised the good fairies who bestowed such gifts upon her at her birth.
None of them – apart from her royal parents – knew that all the good fairies could truly give was best wishes and pretty sparkles. The only one with power enough to truly bless the princess was the one whose name was only ever whispered, as if people were afraid that his very name would summon him.
The Darkling, whose shadows and dark creatures were the stuff of nightmares.
The king and queen never dared to admit that they made a bargain with the Darkling, desperate for their daughter to have the very best life.
Instead, the quietly asked their best generals and soldiers to hunt down the eldritch being who lived in the shadows and kill him.
But none were a match for the Darkling’s power, no matter how many soldiers the royal couple sent.
Princess Alina remained blissfully unaware of all of this.
She had no idea that both her parents and the Darkling were counting down the days until her eighteenth birthday, the former with fear and the latter with anticipation.
For the Darkling had demanded a steep price for such impressive magic as the blessing of the princess.
You shall have her for eighteen years, he had told them, and then she will be my eternal queen.
The king and queen had agreed, sure they could destroy the Darkling within the next eighteen years. But their deadline was hours away and he was as powerful as ever.
Calling on the good fairies, the king and queen begged them to hide the princess away.
But their powers were not equal to the Darkling’s, not even close.
There is nowhere we can take her, one of them said sadly, where He will not discover us.
Besides, another frowned, she is Marked by Him and He will always be able to find her.
For fate had given the princess a gift that was entirely her own, one that had been noticed by the Darkling when he blessed her. She had the power of the sun in her veins. She was the Darkling’s other half, his destined soulmate, the pair of them tethered together by magic, and nothing would ever induce him to give her up.
The clock ticked, the hours and then minutes counting down until midnight.
It didn’t matter how many soldiers guarded the princess, nor how her parents clung to the confused young woman, at the stroke of midnight, the shadows rose higher and higher until the room was completely dark.
And when that darkness faded away a few moments later, Princess Alina was gone.