Prologue

"I had the best dream father, he was even more handsome than the last time I remember, his red gold hair was like fire and his eyes deep blue, ocean blue." The tiny girl sat back on the trailer of the porch in her favorite chair, looking to where Remy and his new girlfriend were kissing on the other. Brienne's father pushed the woman off himself and stood over her, anger in his eyes.

"Again? Where were you this time?" Remy asked his daughter, a much more gentle smile of his face now. Brienne realaxed instantly at the change. She must have been mistaken in thinking he was mad before, he was never mad at her unless she got a spell wrong. Remy was always telling her it was important to get them right, to be able to defend herself from the governance, from the ones that sought to take the girl away.

"We were on a beach, and we were playing in the sand. Can we go to the beach?" Brienne's father nodded, eyes crinkling in the corners as he looked at her. They had been training all year, much more that even they did last year, and Remy said there was something big coming, he could feel it. When Remy felt it was safe, he promised to take her to see the ocean.

"Sure Bijou, but tell me, was there anything else in the dream? Anyone else on the beach, or was it just the two of you?" Brienne loved when he called her 'little jewel', he never called the other children here any nicknames. Remy pushed some of her hair out of her wide green eyes. It was always tangled, unmaintained by either her to Remy.

Candace used to brush it for her, Brienne thought to herself, but she wasn't here anymore. Remy said she wasn't ready for them, for the commitment it took to live out in the free magic, as they did.

"He had two parents, and they sat real close to us Papa. His mother is so pretty!" Brienne giggled at the memory, of the stranger's thin elegant hands threading in and out of her long blonde hair. Brienne's mother, long dead, had never tended to her hair in such a way.

"I'm sure you thought so. What was his name Bijou, the boy?" he asked then. When Brienne thought back, going over the details of her sleeping escapade, she realized with a shrug to her father that they never spoke. Not once.

"Oh I don't know. Do you think he will come soon? Lilly said that my dreams meant I had a mate, and my magic was preparing for him. Do you think he will be like a boyfriend?" Brienne asked, curious about why her father never talked about boys. The other kids teased her about her dreams, they said cruel things about Brienne when they thought she couldn't hear.

"Mates are something else, Bijou. Something else entirely, and none of it is good," he told his daughter, with eyes darkening to black as he said it. Whenever her father talked about something that made him mad, the clouds darkened and his eyes switched to the color of night, as were now.

"Is that why you try out so many girlfriends? You haven't found your mate?" she asked Remy after a moment or two of silence. He always had a girlfriend over, and sometimes they fought with other women over him.

"Your mother was my mate, and she left me," Remy responded back. It was a familiar story to Brienne, told many times, in many ways, over the coarse of her short life. He appeared, to Brienne at least, to bring it up as a life lesson at every available opportunity.

"Mama died, I know. It's why I must stay with you, near you always." The little girl reached a hand up, so small, that it barely covering the side of Remy's wide jaw.

"Yes Bijou, it's why I keep you close. It's why you can never leave me, and I cannot ever let you go now. You look so much like her, it eases me to have you safe here." Brienne nodded her head in obedient understanding. She was the only one at camp that could bring her father back down from madness. It was her touch that Remy sought to bring him out of the pain, and the memories.

"Lilly said I won't ever have a mate because I'm weird, so don't worry." Brienne gave her father's face a reassuring pat, but Remy didn't miss this look of disappointment, and hurt, that lurked behind his daughters sea green irises.

"You are strong and special, my Bijou, and Lilly is jealous of that, just as others will be of everything you can accomplish. You are a Moreau, and we were born from the king's blood. You are descended from the strongest magical blood ever to grace this plane. One day, you will be even stronger, even more powerful than me Bijou. But you must practice, do what you are told, because one day they are going to come for you, they are going to come for me, and we must fight back." Brienne nodded again, patting her father's face one last time before returning it to her own lap. She was rewarded with a rare splitting smile from her father. It showed all his teeth, but Brienne was too young, and naive, to pick up on his hunger for such a fight.

It did remind her, however, of an incident that had happened the day before. And since Remy did not like his daughter keeping information from him, she divulged her encounter.

"Sebastian told me during spell lessons the other day that his father wants to leave us. He thinks you are delusional, about the governance plans, and paranoid. He said you were starting to lose it, what does that mean?" Brienne wanted to know the meaning of the word, more than she was looking for an explanation of what Bastian was saying. There was schooling here, mostly magical, and since she had been with this gypsy clan of mages since birth, her formal schooling was lacking.

"People don't grow out of their bad habits; adults sometimes tease people too, so pay no attention to what the others say. They are only jealous, and those that aren't, are simply afraid of you. The weak fear the strong, it has been so since the beginning," Remy explained, taking another moment to smooth back Bijou's hair. "Do you remember that spell I taught you last week?"

"The one that can confuse the eyes?" Brienne asked. This year, her thirteenth, had been packed full with private lessons. She wanted to please Remy so with remembering the correct one.

"Yes, you can insert your vision into their own for a few seconds, and it makes them silly. Remember how many times you fell over?" he asked, and Brienne broke out in fits of laughter at the recall of that day.

"Excellent! Now, pick a good time, and practice with the ones that tease you. It should teach them a lesson about picking on a Moreau." Remy smiled again, and his daughter did her best to copy the expression. He reached out, touching his palm to her forehead, a shadowed expression covering his eyes as he did so.

"Stop it father, that itches," Brienne said, trying to scratch his hand away. Remy rose to stand after ruffling her hair, his right hand shaking, as if he were covered in water.

"Did you have good dreams Bijou?" Remy asked Brienne.

Her brows furrowed, wondering how she had wandered out here. It wasn't odd for her, to sit on the porch with her father in the night when she couldn't sleep. But, Brienne had the nagging feeling that she had missed something important.

"I played on the beach," Brienne tried to say brightly. It ended up sounding flat, like a recorded phrase.

"With who?" Remy asked with marked interest lighting his eyes.

"I think it was just me," Brienne said, with inexplainable meloncholy tightening her throat.

"Bon," her father said in French, and then pulled Penelope onto his lap once more. "Go back to bed love, we are going hunting tomorrow morning," Remy proudly informed Brienne. Penelope smiled at Brienne, her hand rubbing on Remy's chest like I did with the stray cats that hung around.

Brienne squealed, all sadness fleeing from her in a rush. She had been given a new bow and arrow set for the last solstice, but Remy had been too busy to allow many hunts lately, so it had remained barely used under her bed. She killed things better with her spells, but there was something about the feel of a weapon under her hands that made her feel even more powerful.

"What are we hunting father?" Brienne thought to ask, just before turning and heading back to her room.

"Spies," Remy answered, smiling wide.

Brienne looked at him confused, but he started kissing his girlfriend again, so she made her way into the trailer, with the echoing laughter of the woman following her all the way.