I. PROLOGUE

The fire was everywhere.

A red-haired woman ran along the stone way dragging two children with her.

"Luke and Devon are still in there, let me go!" The boy, no more than twelve, wriggled in her grasp.

"Do you want to die, boy?"

The boy shrugged off her cousin's hand and looked straight in her eyes.

"I will die if I have to, but I won't run while my friends burn." He spat and ran off in the smoke.

"No wait, Alex....!" She screamed after him but by the time she had moved a few steps, the boy had disappeared in the roaring fire.

Alex was an impulsive boy and she'd been rough on him these past few years, but she loved him, he was the last of her family.

The knights had came suddenly that day, without warning.

She knew what they had come looking for.

"Will he come back?"

She gave a look of distaste to the girl, holding on to her other arm.

" I wouldn't give you hopes, girl, the boy won't survive."

The girl fell to the ground and broke down crying.

She had blue eyes and hair as white as silk.

Kelly had hated her from the first time she saw her.

She got Alex on the same day as her and she had raised them since then. It was not that she wanted to raise them. In fact, she didn't want to. She had wanted to marry an innkeeper and have her own children. Damn that man in the dark cloak, he'd killed the innkeeper and handed her a princess and a long lost cousin in a bag.

She'd wanted to hate them, but she couldn't help loving the small boy. He hated her and she knew that. Part of her had made him hate her, the reason she didn't know.

'Raise the child, for the Oracle has spoken.'

Damn that man and damn his Oracle.

The girl was a homing beacon. Anybody would look at her and say, ' That's the princess of Aldigiya, Serena, all right.'

And then, her worst nightmare had come true.

She had barely escaped the inn, when she heard the door break.

Some of the maids had got news, but perhaps too late.

The knights of House Reyjin had trampled her inn down and searched all the way through. When they didn't find anyone, they put fire to the village.

That was the justice in the lands of Omar.

"Come on now, no time for your crying. We need to go somewhere safe, somewhere they won't get to you."

And then, in the still of the night, they started their journey in the woods. She kept thinking about what had happened to take her mind off the cold.

' They had come for Serena, hadn't they? But what if she was wrong. Perhaps they had come for something else or someone....'