Kingdom of Smoke

Down With The Queen

Everyone experiences a tower moment at least once in their lives, a moment when everything they once knew comes crumbling around them. This is Naomi Forestier's tower moment. This was never in the cards, the ancestors never warned her.

...

Naomi made the journey to Warredion, the Dominion of the Warriors, from Wituniain, Terrain of Witches, three months ago. At the same time, Sirena Nguyen came to marry the newfound King Ambrose Cloutier.

The former king's heart had stopped the day King Ambrose turned of age to inherit the throne. Of course, no one would accuse the new king of murder, especially the murder of one's own father. So it was ruled a tragic, coincidental cause of old age and the kingdom rejoiced that Ambrose Cloutier had at least been of age and was happy as long as he found a wife to rule with him. With his newfound popularity among allied kingdoms, he found her after only a day and a half, taking the trip to Locbroalm, The Golden Realm, and coming back with the new queen.

She didn't know what brought her to Warredion out of all places. A place where witches weren't welcome. She did what she had to to survive. Including pretending to be a servant girl from the Lost Islands as she boarded any ship that would let her work to stay aboard, no questions asked.

It was on board a ship that she heard of a healer who possessed power only felt in Wituniain residing in Warredion and intuition told her that was where she needed to head once on land. The voyage took only six weeks while she practiced her weather magic, aiding the wind, adjusting the flow of water, and only allowing storms that steered them in the right direction faster. She had the elements on her side which meant that she would be of great use to the healer once she found her.

By the time she reached the kingdom, she had come to the conclusion that she was drawn here, drawn to live in a cottage she had found on the outskirts of a town in Warredion. A cottage in which the woman she was searching for had been found out and executed. She knew this only because she was at the execution, haven just arrived that morning and inquiring about where she could seek refuge after the brutal trek across continents, while her people cried out in outrage with the war that rages on because of the place she would now have to call home.

Truth be told she couldn't go back to her people, they had killed her parents, Hellaina Deniau, a powerful healer who held power in the council, after the other members of the council discovered she was writing with her father, a powerful warrior in Dealorory, Territory of the Dead. Both the Wituniain and the Dealorory would be looking for her soon once they realize she wasn't in the slaughter and had a claim to both territories.

Dealorory was a wasteland and no ally to anyone. They were often a peaceful people but when they were wronged, they took no prisoners and therefore made enemies of everyone. Her father had taken a prisoner once, her mother before Naomi was conceived and in that time they were together, they fell in love. He had taken her prisoner in the night having thought she was the reason the Wituniains were no longer trading with his territory. Dealorory depended on the trades and when that was lost so were many of their people. She was set free and had made the journey in secret to the border each night in the hopes he would be patrolling the old trade route. Their love was forbidden, of course, haven been enemies and that fact was no secret to them. Her mother had tried to kill him the first four encounters at the border. And he had tried to kill her. Twice. But each time something stopped them and from the hatred grew understanding and from the understanding, love.

War rages on two fronts in Wituniain now. On one side of the domain war brewed with Warredion, her people waiting for them to make the first move to action. On the other, war broke out with Dealorory over the slaughter of one of their most admired warrior.