Blessed by Twice (an excerpt of TEARS OF RAGE: First Chosen)

The night before her seventh birthday, Julianna woke up.  It wasn’t the slow waking that came naturally in the morning, with the sunlight peeking through the curtains.  This was a quick waking in the middle of the night; the kind of waking that came when the nightmares grew too much for her to bear, when those eyes wouldn’t stop staring at her from within the darkness of her mind’s eye.  However, this time, there had been no nightmares; those eyes had been absent from her mind more and more.

Her room was dark.  Moonlight shone through the small space between her curtains, making a ghostly line of white in the middle of her black floor. 

She heard voices downstairs.  Did Mother and Father have guests over?  She didn’t recall a formal supper being planned, and while her parents’ friends would occasionally surprise them with an evening visit, it would be unusual for them to stay this late. 

Perhaps Mother and Father were speaking to Julianna’s nurse, preparing her for the next day when the nurse’s services would no longer be needed.  Julianna smiled at the thought of that conversation.  After tomorrow, Julianna would never have to suffer her nurse – who she always thought of as that woman – again.

 Footsteps echoed throughout the house, and Julianna thought she heard the fourth step of the main stairs creak.  It had been like that for years, and both Mother and Father refused to get it fixed.  The stair creaked again.  And again, someone said something.  Julianna couldn’t understand the words, but the tone sounded like Father speaking to one of his followers that had disobeyed him.

    A gunshot sounded.  Julianna tensed so much that her heart seemed to stop.  Her breath came in quick, in-and-out blasts through clenched teeth.  This wasn’t the first time, someone attacked the house, and it wouldn’t be the last – Father and Mother had many enemies throughout the Kingdom – but this was the first time anyone had ever fired a gun in the manor.  Firearms were illegal; possessing one was a capital offense in the Kingdom of the Sun.  The estate had never been so quiet as it was in the few moments that followed.  Another gunshot followed, and fighting broke the silence.  Julianna’s heart sped up; as if it needed to catch those beats it had lost in the silence.  She gripped her blankets and pulled the covers over her head.

The door opened.  She held her breath and tightened every part of her body to be perfectly still.  The door closed.  She bit her lip to keep quiet.

“Julianna?” Mother’s voice whispered from the other side of the blanket.

Julianna leapt from her bed.  “Mother, what’s happening?  I heard gunshots.  Are they in the house?” 

“Help me with the sheets,” Mother said.

Together they stripped the bed.  All the while, fighting continued in other parts of the house.  Steel clashed, and occasionally a gunshot rang out.  Mother made a long rope out of the sheets, tied one end to the foot of Julianna’s wardrobe, and tossed the other end out the window.    Julianna took a step toward the window, but Mother grabbed her and pushed her under the bed.  A moment later, Mother joined her amongst the dust, forgotten toys, and spiders.

Mother pushed something into Julianna's hands.  She looked down.  It was one of Father’s knives.  The blade was as long as her forearm and thin as her thumb, and even in the darkness under the bed, she could see the reddish hue of the metal.  It had a single word etched into the blade in Father’s god’s language.  Kostota.

“Listen to me, Julianna,” Mother whispered.  Mother only used Julianna’s proper name when she was angry or very serious.  Any other time Julianna was Little Duchess.  “If they find us, I want you to fight.  Fight like the forty-nine Morigahnti at the Battle of Ykthae Wood.  Fight to make your father proud.  Fight hard enough to make them kill you.”  Mother shook Julianna’s shoulders.  “Do you understand me?  Do not let them take you while you live.”