Three Broken Kingdoms-Book 1 of the Lost Continent (Completed)

Chapter One: Fire, Ice & Song

Layla's Point of View

The streets of Veron were flooded with a fog that had turned orange and yellow from the glowing streetlights.

Children whispered through the fog, bumping into stalls and scattering fruits. The aroma of bread and pastries wafted through the air, enticing. Spices from all across the archipelago dotted the little corners of the marketplace, the scents of perfumes and the rich odours of chocolates and oranges filled the late evening air. Laughter filled the streets.

Layla Swallow loved it here. Loved breathing in the beauty and the laughter, loved the way the streetlights turned the fog orange and glowing. Loved the way that she got to open the casket of wonders and take out each piece, one by one.

And then she heard a quiet, lilting sound of a song pouring through the air like syrup.

That was one of the things Layla loved most about the square...it was filled with music. Quick-paced, laughing songs, slow, tragic, solemn pieces, songs about love and pain and stars. She cherished them, the way they wiped the world away to a mere backdrop.

Veron was filled to the brim with musicians, singers and guitarists and drummers and trumpeters. Filled with storytellers and actors and theatres. They called it the City of Wonder.

All of this could sweep her far away from a world where was a Spare Heir, where she was born to stand beside the ruler of two city-states, born to serve that crown to her last breaths.

Like syrup, the music flowed into her ears, and took over her thoughts. She gave herself to it, drinking it in. Her father, Orion, smiled at her. They both shared a love of music.

Whilst they drifted towards the source of the melodies like stray puppies towards the smell of food, Layla's mother brought chocolate popcorn and wolfed it down alongside Layla's twin-elder by minutes. Her mother and sister were more interested in the sciences, the things they could see rather than those that she could feel deep in her bones.

So at least half an hour passed, with her father and her following the source of the best music like sunflowers growing toward the sun, and her mother and sister, Maia, enjoying various sweet treats whilst trailing after them. When the music had ripped her heart and mended it so many times that she felt dizzy, she and her mother and her father walked towards the harbour, walking through orange fog.

The harbour was not an ordinary harbour like Layla had heard that valkyries, elves and even humans had had before their continent had been lost to the world. No, when your city was floating in the sky, your harbours were not ordinary at all.

They walked through the streets until the scents of the marketplace faded away,  and the sound of music was gone, and then they found the edge of the city.

The sheer drop was terrifying, higher than the tallest mountain. It didn't scare her, though. No, like all other elves, the height-the sky-made her feel alive.

Cascading down from the edge were waterfalls, falling from the floating island all the way to the ground they couldn't even see for the clouds. The gushing falls were piercing through the white clouds  like the flow of tap water through bubbles. There were dozens of people at the edge of the floating city at this time of day, just as sunset began.

Layla watched, enraptured, as the dusk bled into the sky and left the world in pink and purples. Suddenly the fog was no longer orange or red: it was now soft purples and bright pinks.                

A city trapped in eternal autumn, with the trees red, orange and gold, all done by their elfin magic. A city filled with amphitheatres and marketplaces and music. She could feel the heart of Veron beating with her as the sun went down.

Layla began to sing in Ancient Elfin, a mellifluous  tongue. Her magic did not end with simply the type of song that could be wielded to destroy worlds. The type of Song that seemed born from a goddess. Her magic seeped into her ordinary voice, too, and it gave her the voice of an angel.

The people around her were already watching her, of course. She was their future Right Hand, and her father, their Lord and sister, their future Lady, stood beside her. But most were used to them wandering the city, and so had only stared for a short time. But now they all turned, to listen to that voice, that beautiful, ethereal voice that was somehow better than any of the other sweet music that they had ever heard in Veron.

Her father smiled at her, his purple eyes-eyes like hers-twinkling with quiet stars. Her mother and sister smiled at her, too, but she did not understand the music like her father did. The way it wiped away everything else and freed her from the burden of a crown and a people.

She sang on and on to the dying sun as the night swept over Veron.

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Maia

The beat of her feet on the cobblestones was the music to which she danced. Her sister's song coursed through her bones and she twirled and twirled around on around, moon-white hair-identical, of course to her sister's-flying in the wind.

She was a firestorm, a spark of lightning. She gave her heart over fully to the dance until she knew naught but the song and the music and the beat. Her dress twirled with her and she got so caught up with it, that for a moment she forgot who she was and who she was destined to be.

For a moment, the heavy burden on her shoulders eased. For a moment, she felt almost free-free of the crown, free of her duty, free of the name Maia Charlize Swallow that had everyone turning their heads to look at her. Free of a thousand expectant gazes.

Then memory returned and the moment shattered. She locked eyes with her sister-identical, light purple eyes just like her own.

It doesn't matter, she told herself. When she's here, none of it matters. We can do this if we're together. And with that thought, she was lost once more, swept up in her twin's song and in the beat of her feet on the cobblestones.