I'm so excited to be writing with SilverHuntresses again! Especially since we've never written evil Octachel before. This story focuses more on our PCs, the adopted children of Octavian and Rachel. Unfortunately, the first few chapters aren't ready yet. After the prologue, we'll be releasing them two at a time, with my chapters (Adrian) and then SilverHuntresses chapters (Isabelle)

I don't know when the next update will be, hopefully soon but probably not for a week or two. I'm writing all the time and have a lot of stories that I'm working on as well as this one. If you think you want more of a taste of this kind of thing I have a very short story called Let Us Rule Together. Of course, I always, always recommend reading SilverHuntresses' many stories as well

Please review, we're really excited to be writing this for you!

Prologue-Adrian

Once there was a King and Queen

So beautiful and wise

They ruled their kingdom with love

And truth was in their eyes

But there were things they couldn't see

At least they never said

An uprising begins to sing,

"The King and Queen are dead!"

The mutiny happened when I was six. I didn't understand it then. I saw the truth, what no one else could see. I had the eyes to see and I saw a good King and Queen, good rulers, good parents. Outsiders who were meant to belong, even if they had to make it that way themselves, ushering in a new wave of outsiders, trying to create a misfit utopia. Sometimes you have to create the world you want to live in. And sometimes blood will be shed for it, but what's a little bloodshed for the greater good?

The Queen began as mortal, but she had a gift. She could see the world as it was, the world he was born into. The King was removed from mortality, he could still live and die but he was born into a world where he was able to be more. Then he was starved of that being, denied leadership and change. Forced to do what he did best, read the future and hand it off to someone else. Being denied a future of his own, practically chained to his role in the temple of a god who couldn't care less about his prophet. The King and Queen had to seize their own destiny, their own royalty. The world as they wanted to live in it.

It was a good world to me. It was a world where I had a family, where they had a son. The gods had forbidden them from having children of their own, gods and mortals had discarded their offspring like loose change. So the King and Queen gathered lost children, children like them who could see more and be more. Children who would have changed the world had the world not suppressed them the way it suppressed their parents. Children who had a destiny. Children who didn't understand why some people wouldn't bow to change.

For a little over six years, the King and Queen ruled, fighting for what they saw was right. And who would know better than prophets? They saw a better world and decided to obtain it. No longer would they be sidelined, letting others be the chosen ones. They painted their own destiny, wrote their own story, and made the world better for it. They held positions of power over the children of gods, letting the haughty and proud flicker out into submission, never knowing or never showing that they knew a war was coming.

Wars always have to come. If you're going to build a kingdom out of your destiny you have to be willing to fight for it. And the King and Queen were willing to fight. Silenced and shoved aside all their lives they were finally able to bear arms against those who went to war against them. There were seven, in particular, leading an army against the royalty. The rebellion, the mutiny. Prophecy, destiny, the power to change should have been enough to keep the King and Queen in control, but the seven were stronger. Apparently that was destiny.

Fire, flood, and storm were enough to crush the kingdom. Those who spoke the truth found themselves powerless against those who spoke control. The King and Queen were cut down that day, and from the ashes, no phoenix rose, not then at least. But in the rubble, the Crown Prince and Princess were found as mere children, and I was separated from my sister. The subjects should have mourned that day, the day I mourned and vowed revenge, but all I remember was singing. I remember something sweet and symphonic, ruining the taste of music in my mouth. From that day on, I would write poetry, turning words into songs that would never be sung and chants that would one day be screamed from the ruins of my kingdom as I took it back. I was so young when I first vowed revenge. Only six years old the day I decided that I would remake the world as I wanted to live in it the first chance I got.

No one sang a dirge for the King and Queen. No one held a funeral, or held Isabelle and I's hand, leading us to their graves so that we could lay down flowers. They didn't even give us the dignity of goodbye, to each other, to our parents. The kingdom didn't care. We should have meant something to them but while we mourned they rejoiced, and the rejoicing was louder than death. I hid my face in mourner's black, kept my eyes down as my heart hardened. The kingdom had rebelled against their royalty. One day the remaining royalty would rebel against the kingdom. Isabelle and I, separated by great expanses, were simply biding our time, waiting to rise.

There was rejoicing

Over the wailing

And one day the script

Will be reversed

One day I'll hold the key

To the kingdom I had to leave

One day the suffering

Will mean something

One day this Phoenix

Will rise from the ashes