Prologue
Two figures cut darker shadows into the already inky blackness of the secret room built especially for this night. One was a woman, a Jinn, and the other: her most loyal dwarf, sworn to secrecy. The woman bit down on her cheek to stiffly yet another cry of pain, beads of sweat glistening on her slick forehead. She was determined not to make a sound, though she well knew that not a soul would hear, not this far underground. She hated this child. She hated this child for existing and its father for tricking her. It would come soon.
"I see the head, your majesty. We're almost there."
The woman pushed with all her might, willing the child to come so she could take care of it. Almost instantly, the cries of a newborn baby pierced her ears, shattering the stillness that had formerly settled into the air. She gritted her teeth against the sound, hating how it echoed off the walls. She put the child down on the ground and picked up her wand. Her eyes glinted with determination as she raised it, the lethally sharp end aimed straight at her baby's heart. Soon it would be nothing more than one of the thousands of stone statues in her courtyard. Soon this curse upon her would be gone.
She prepared to plunge her wand into her child, but hesitated when she found her hand to be shaking. Furrowing her eyebrows in anger, she raised it higher into the air, trying desperately to harden the resolve she felt slipping from her fingers. She found herself looking straight into the child's deep brown eyes, feeling her hate and anger being slowly melted away by its innocence. What was it, anyway? She looked it over to see that this baby he had birthed in secret was a daughter. Her daughter. Not anyone else's, her own child that had grown inside her these past 9 months, its existence kept a secret.
She couldn't do it. She did not want this child, but neither could she dispose of it as one would a pestilence. She slowly lowered her wand, cursing her own weakness.
"My queen?" The dwarf asked tentatively.
"BE QUIET!" she roared in a voice so terrible the ground shook above their heads.
The dwarf was silent for a moment before speaking up again. "Send her back to the land from whence she came."
She pondered this for a moment before raising her wand once more; and suddenly a blinding flash of light seared the tunnel, leaving a new stone statue for the Queen to add to her courtyard.
She turned around, shut the door, and vowed to never return, shooting a spell toward the remaining figures in the room as she left.
A bright flash of light illuminated the lonely streets of London, the magic from the spell gathering into a shimmering halo around the tiny form that landed on the sidewalk. It was turning blue with the cold, its cries intensifying with every passing minute.
A matronly old lady came out of a nearby building, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders against the bite of winter. She hurried over toward the wailing baby, not even pausing before taking off her shawl and wrapping the newborn child in it. She hushed it and carried it into the building she had come from, wondering where the beautiful baby girl could have come from on such a night.