the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (snow like ashes txt) 📕

ready enough for such a task. Belinda suspected that her father really had persuaded Maria to give it up, because he felt that Belinda was better.
Belinda was very mature, that was true.
Was she ready to be queen?
She didn’t know.
She tried to concentrate on other things.
She enjoyed this place. All her life she had been here, feeling like a visitor in a strange land. Sometimes she came with her ladies in waiting, sometimes with her mother or father, sometimes with her siblings. Mostly she came alone, spending time talking to the sunflowers. They were her friends.
There was something about those flowers that shone in her heart when she looked at them. Her soul somehow felt really calm when she looked at them. Made her want to be the best she could be.
Who could come here of all places to harm her? She was old enough to be alone over here. Especially her father, who usually trusted her with things, was so extraordinarily worried if she walked out alone. She wondered why. She supposed he didn't want to risk anything. He really wanted her to be queen. She wanted it, too.
She felt somehow that she could be a good queen. It was funny in a way. Because her favourite girl in waiting Marie-Louise and she had always played king and queen and in fact did it when her father came and told her he wanted to suggest to the senators that she be heir to the throne. But, my God, what an interesting thing to become queen. Scary in a way, was it not? A future queen, how did that sound? They were scared. She wasn't. She was not scared of anything at all.
She ran her fingers across the sunflowers and walked zigzag among them, some of them tickling her legs under her flowery dress. She giggled at both the thought of becoming a queen and at the feeling of the flowers against her legs. Belinda sang a song.
What will it be like when you ask me?
What will it be like when you kiss?
What will it be like when the flowers of fall
Turn into something I miss?
What will it be like when we marry?
What will it be like when we cry?
What will it be like when you say yes
To a question of do or die?
She wondered whom she would love.
She was romantic, like so many girls.
She knew that she surprised them by being so articulate and learned. She couldn't help having all this experience. Being the king's daughter. Did that make her aloof or better than other girls?
No, not really.
How could she have anything to do with being a princess? Could she help that? Most boys couldn't have a normal conversation with her. She longed for someone that did not look like they were in awe of her status. It had to be the right love, of course. Her father wanted a boy that was from a good home. A queen that ruled a country as big as this had to have a good boy as a husband. He would be titled "Prince-King". She said she would want him to be her King but with her ruling the country completely with his advice, of course.
She had only prior to her appointment to the throne seen the scribes in their red robes rushing down the hallways like hungry dogs for their master's dinner. She felt depressed when her father had too many duties to see her. He always tried to have time for her. But then and again which was quite often, it did not work at all and her daddy had to be away for months to some country. Then she would take a picture of him around and tell him stuff. "My picture-father,” she called it.
That day, he was there. The day she became "queen to be" as she called it. The scribes rushed down the hallways to see her. That felt good. But after four hours of signing and tutoring, her eyes were tired and she just wanted her bed. When the fifth hour came, she stood up and screamed at her daddy (the first and only time she had ever done that in her life): "I'm just a little girl!" He had been so sweet and carried her to bed to the protest of the royal scribes of the Senate. After the horrible year of 1411, Alexander decided to write his own documents, letting the scribes go. Due to the stress they caused.
In fact there had been only one thing left to sign, but her head was spinning with all of this information. She felt really bad about leaving like that and then letting the scribes wait for a night and the entire morning before they could leave and give the Senate its papers about her being the girl that was to become a queen one day.
It was too much for a little girl. After all, she was ten years old. But, practically a woman now (she thought so, anyway), her silly family laughed at the prospect of her telling the world not to go beyond her capabilities. There was a lot of woman in her waiting to break out. A deep thought entered her conscious mind and dived into her sleeping soul.
And at once, that shadow was there again. Standing on the hill. A black dress. Black hair. Black eyes. Long lost. Exiled woman back. The sunflowers seemed distant in the face of a person that did nothing but stand and watch. Her face was dark and, though the face was new, the stories of a sister gone were not. And soon enough the kingdom was in tears. And a young would-be queen was tied up in a coach on the way to a distant land. The young girl that called herself the soon-to-be queen was not in a field of sunflowers singing songs of jolly spring. She was in a black coach decorated with diamond studs, tied up in thick rope and muffled with rough cloth.
The ten year old maiden had been wandering about among the sunflowers as was her custom, when Lucinda had returned and took her away to her own palace in far west of Yambollah. She had been walking the sunflower field for a full hour singing that day. She had hummed as children do, letting the flowers know that her father had planted for her tickle her legs, knowing fully well that her father would reprimand her in having let Tom stand by the poppy field.
The figure on the hill above must’ve stood there for a long time until she noticed it. It was only when it came closer she noticed it was Lucinda. Running away had no purpose for guards were waiting by her side. A young girl like her gave the black souls a run for their money and she even knocked Lucinda down, telling her she would send her father on her.
Gagged she was thrown in the back of a blue carriage and tied up together with smelly brutes. For days she had been left without much food or water and anytime she was fed with stinking liquid and really old mouldy bread rolls she tried to escape. Once, about a week after her capture, she even made it a whole day, and managed to sleep over in a barn, the owner being very sweet about it all thinking she was a tramp of some kind. The guards caught her as she was about to leave and the old man, who lived alone, as a widower with his son on the farm, tried his best to protect the girl, but it didn’t work out. It was apparently then it dawned on him who she was.
In Iuventus Sacrum all hell had broken loose. A note had been found, telling her father that “Belinda is now under my care” and in red ink “Lucinda”. She knew that Alex knew that she was Adnicul’s lover in Rigor Mortis, so it was just a question of time before he arrived.
Callenia was dark and the birds circled the wagon as they rode down a leaf-covered path in the middle of spring. Undernourished, tortured, crying and lonely she arrived in the large castle at the beginning of May and promptly dressed in rags and was tied to a bed down in the castle dungeon. She spat at every person she could and screamed herself hoarse every day in the dungeons, waiting for her father, praying for her father. Hoping he would come. Hoping and praying. The man with the eye patch came every day and would say nothing but: “Let the bitch whither away!” She knew not who he was, only that he was everything she was not. Occasionally, she was taken out in chains and given a nice meal, but she could not swallow or eat anything at all. Lucinda offered her the kingdom itself if she only became a witch under her protection. She refused and was brought to the rack once again. She dreamt and she never knew if it was night or day. The guards would come and do unspeakable things, Lucinda would arrive and look at her for hours and Belinda drifted away, not knowing if what she saw was a vision or a dream.
She saw herself in a carriage at age 21, wearing a green dress on the way to a meeting with an enemy. She saw herself beating up the young woman and heard herself say: “My horse is black and my name is Nina Ray!” The woman slowly turned into Lucinda sitting at the edge of the rack she was tied to, who confirmed the vision by exclaiming: “There’s your Apocalyptic Nina, your sign of disgrace!” The young girl was terrified and had no idea what this was. The noises that scared her in the beginning of July that year eventually brought her father back into her arms and Rigor Mortis was burnt to the ground after a raging war between the two battalions that left everyone dead, except Adnicul and Lucinda who were gone. The young girl would not speak for months after the horrid experience that had torn her soul apart.
There were stories of Rigor Mortis miraculously appearing back in full splendour again. Her father’s words ringing in her ears: “The only reason why I don’t tear your country to pieces, Adnicul, is to spare my daughter a war. My country does not need a war.”

Near Rigor Mortis Castle, Sunday, October 11th, 1411 A.D.
Enemy Kingdom of Nocturania

Four black horses led the coach through the deep dark night, its coachman was a man with a navy blue cape. His one eye patch over the right eye was new and the hole beneath it was a punishment. He would not reveal his origin to anyone but the woman whose abduction this was. The girl inside tried to scream, but couldn't. The screams were muffled and soon whips were brought out and chains rattled.
The flowers were dying a slow death of lonely sorrow over not yet revealed betrayal. This was an unexpected breach of exile, an unexpected return of a certain individual. Iuventus Sacrum, the palace of sacred youth, was in tears. And so was the king.
That night, Belinda Winsletenna had ridden all night in a carriage with no name. Lucinda held her by the neck and inserted little rose thorns into her forehead. She had seen her father looking for her back in September, an entire galleon of soldiers riding through the night practically next to her and not hearing her. Now, it seemed, Lucinda and Adnicul were only taking her out to torture her.
The night was used to get Belinda closer