It's been four weeks, exactly a month, since Scarlett Solaris took to the throne and has been leading her nation, Goldaria. She and her friends still hurt from the traumatic mental wounds inflicted on them during their captivity weeks prior, but the...
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✰✦✰ Chapter One ✰✦✰ " Scarlett "
I NODDED ALONG with them and pretended to know what they were going on about. In a way, I knew exactly what they were chatting about. In many others, I was a clueless, helpless, stressed teenage girl. They all beamed, speaking of political views and how proud they once were of our kingdom, that they wished we could go back to those good old days—the days in which, by the way, my parents lied to the world about our country's secret war with Shadow Stealers—when everything was better and more stable, not like now, where attacks brought on by Shadow Stealers were more frequent than ever. I held in a scoff at that statement but had to force away my eyes in order to remain in control of my laughter and eye rolling. I couldn't exactly go around berating people like I'd once done anymore, could I? I was officially the ruler of Goldaria.
Officially a Queen. Their Queen.
That thought caused goosebumps to spread across my body in less time than it would take for me to say "Fuck". And that was a word I'd gotten so very used to saying over the last weeks.
I'd been Queen of Goldaria for roughly four or five weeks—I'd nearly forgotten what sleep was for so long already—and every day presented new challenges that puzzled or exhausted me more than maths did. I was forced to sign different forms and make public statements telling the whole world my story and everything I'd gone through to thankfully get here. That was sarcastic in every way. I wasn't happy I'd gotten here. I wasn't glad or lucky or proud of myself that I'd made it to the finish line—a finish line that I'd always pictured was different. Not one where I'd had to practically murder my own sister to be able to sit on a throne and have the audacity to call someone like myself a leader. Someone who deserved that title when I certainly didn't.
I could name a dozen people, or even more, who were more deserving of being one than me.
But after the world had discovered that I was alive and well, even after a challenge that most people believed would kill me, there was no way I could sneak past the whole ruling-a-country that was "meant" to be led by me one day anymore. There was no getting out or escaping. Everyone knew who I was and what I looked like—I would never be free again.
This time, freedom hadn't done me any good. It had left me all alone. Even if I had my friends to surround me, I was alone in the darkness that was engulfing me slowly.
"Scarlett?"
I jerked my head and found myself staring into Luna's kind blue eyes. She held up a glass of something fizzy and pink, smiling hesitantly.
