The King's Daughter

Prologue

Royal Balls were always something I looked forward to. They meant I could mingle with the common folk and see my good friends who lived in the poorer side of the city.

This ball was not like normal balls though. We were celebrating my fifteenth birthday. In my honor, I was allowed to choose the theme, and so naturally I chose a masquerade. When everyone wore a mask, it made everything so much more exciting.

My mother, Queen Luna, and my father, King Bellamy, were kind rulers and invited everyone to these events. But in doing so, there had to be a great amount of security to protect the royal family.

There was always a guard following my twelve year old sister, Flora, everywhere she went, but she didn't mind. She enjoyed practicing her flirting skills with them, even though the burly men never responded to her. Her infatuation with the opposite sex amused me because of how young she was.

As for my brother, Finn, who was two years younger than me, he hated having a constant shadow and always tended to lose them so he could disappear into the crowd. He was a more introverted lad.

My own personal body guard, Felix, remained nearby at all times, watching my surroundings and making sure I was safe. My father had assigned another female guard to watch me as well, for he deemed it necessary as tonight was a night where it would be easy for trouble makers to slip inside the palace. Marin was quite a capable young woman and took her job very seriously so I felt completely safe in the hands of both of them.

Normally, all kinds of petty gossip circulated around the ball room throughout the night about anything and everything. But tonight, the gossip wasn't innocent rumors of the neighboring kingdom's prince's affairs with his servant girls.

No, tonight the gossip was much harsher and sobering than that. News of a tragic event from yesterday evening found its way from person to person until it met my ears.

My friend, Catie, found me at the edge of the enormous dance floor just after a kind lad had escorted me off it.

She leaned close to my ear and said softly, "Have you heard what has happened, highness?"

"No. What's happened?" I asked curiously, brushing a stray strawberry blond curl from my eyes. It bothered me how she always refused to say my name.

"There's been another killing." She told me under her breath.

"Another?" I responded in surprise. The last one had happened only last month. They were happening more and more frequently now.

"Yes, and it was the same men. They killed twenty-two innocents in the town square." She told me.

"Twenty-two." I whispered in disbelief. The numbers kept rising.

I was almost too afraid to ask how they were murdered. The last several times had been gruesome.

Over the years, a mysterious and elusive group of men, who were known as the Blue Knights, settled themselves comfortably in the city and had been terrorizing innocent people randomly.

They'd appear out of nowhere, viciously kill anyone in their path and then vanish. Other times they would steal something valuable like precious gems from the palace treasury. All they did was cause trouble and leave devastation in their wake. We never saw their faces, as they wore masks, much like the masks guests were wearing tonight. They were cunning and skilled at what they did. The only clue as to who they were, was the voice of their leader.

In times past, the leader of the Blue Knights would infiltrate the television network and stream videos of himself masked and in the shadows, stating a message he thought would scare the kingdom. Threats that things would change in the future and that nobody was safe, even with the king's highly skilled guards protecting the city.