Queen of Morkaia

Chelsea Girard

Description

It is written that the firstborn must take their seat on the throne in the case of death among the king or queen. But what happens if you are twins?After the sudden death of their mother, twins Cassius and Ivy must battle for the throne in order to see who will rule over Morkaia. But when they must put their differences aside during the war against the kingdom's enemies, they may lose more than just the throne in battle.

Sujets

• Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 31 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645754855
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Queen of Morkaia
Chelsea Girard
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-08-31
The Queen of Morkaia About the Author Copyright Information © Prologue Cassius Chapter 1 Ivy Chapter 2 Cassius Chapter 3 Ivy Chapter 4 Cassius Chapter 5 Ivy Chapter 6 Cassius Chapter 7 Ivy Chapter 8 Cassius Chapter 9 Ivy Chapter 10 Cassius Chapter 11 Ivy Chapter 12 Cassius Chapter 13 Ivy Chapter 14 Cassius Chapter 15 Ivy Chapter 16 Cassius Chapter 17 Ivy Chapter 18 Cassius Chapter 19 Ivy Chapter 20 Cassius Chapter 21 Ivy Epilogue
About the Author
Chelsea Girard is a 22-year-old journalist residing in Ontario, Canada. With eight other published books under her belt, Chelsea writes in varying genres poetry, self-help, contemporary and fantasy. When she isn’t writing, Girard enjoys photography and reviewing books.
Copyright Information ©
Chelsea Girard (2020)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Ordering Information:
Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Girard, Chelsea
The Queen of Morkaia
ISBN 9781645754831 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781645754848 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781645754855 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020909734
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street, 28th Floor
New York, NY 10005
USA
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Prologue

Cassius
Tall walls surrounded me as I lay in bed, staring at the marble ceiling. My sadness engulfed every inch of my mind as my will power could no longer save me from my fate. Worn sheets, used by almost every generation of my family, wrapped around my legs, trying to keep still my restless movements. It was sad to say but my mother dying wasn’t the only thing on my mind at the moment.
She passed away two days ago from “unknown causes” which was a load of bullshit in my opinion. I turned over to the side of my bed and threw my feet onto the cold stone floor. I pulled the blanket over my thighs and held it tightly against my torso. How does one just die in their sleep without anyone knowing? Not to mention she was perfectly healthy.
The large stained windows in the room let the moonlight cast looming shadows of purple and blue onto the ground. The dark colors matched my thoughts. I was kept from knowing anything about my own mother, nobody was allowed to see her but my father. Not even doctors could say no to him, he was the king after all.
We were told to stay in our rooms until we were announced to come out for the funeral. In order to keep the public out of the family death and so, we all had our time to grieve. I continued to gaze out the window, and I could see the pale outline of the courtyard through the distorted glass. Ironic, as that’s how I felt I was seeing everything right now—through warped glass.
Ivy was beside herself, as anyone could have figured. My sister and our mom were inseparable and she believed that she must have been keeping a secret about the sickness she was battling. These thoughts kept me tossing and turning, I could hear the old oak bed frame creak as I threw myself about. The etched wood followed spiraling patterns, designs of trees and leaves, plants of all kinds. I ran my fingers over the aged wood, trying to distract myself with these things I’ve seen every night since I had been born, but nothing could keep me from thinking about my mother. I mean, it made sense but she didn’t seem sick in the slightest. Lung cancer? No, she wasn’t coughing or getting any treatments done. Chickenpox? No, she didn’t show any signs of redness or itching. A cover-up for something more? Ding, ding, ding. We had a winner.
I knew something was up from the very beginning, and I think I’ve diagnosed the cause of my insomnia. I found it unsettling that Ivy and I weren’t allowed to see our own mother before she was buried. I looked to the door at the front of the room and knew it was locked, but it still looked friendly and inviting with colorful pastels and oil paints. Locked in, I felt trapped. The bed that I once raced to jump onto after laboring over whatever had been going on in the kingdom, now just felt like a prison. It was unfair, more so to my sister even. Ivy was the one who walked in on our cold-blooded mother but when she cried out in fear, she was escorted out of the room faster than she walked in.
I remember it as if it was seconds ago. I was wandering the narrow corridors just after dawn, the light just barely starting to make its way into the castle walls. My eyes were only half-open as I made my way through the backdoor that led to our vast kitchen. Not a moment after I came in, the ivory doorknob smacked on my elbow. Ivy ran into my arms and I held her as she sobbed loudly and cried out the words no one wants to hear, ever. “Mom’s dead.”
I wish I could take her pain away but there was nothing I could say or do to bring my mother back.
“Ivy, you okay?” I said as I walked quietly into her room. My head was poking through a crack in her open door as I held onto the door frame, awaiting a pillow to be thrown in my direction. To my surprise, nothing was thrown as she sat on her bed, sobbing quietly into her hands.
“Ivy, you can’t stay in your room all day,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder from behind.
“You don’t understand, Cassius,” Ivy said as she lifted her tired eyes from her hands. Her face was moist from her tears and her hair was in an unwashed bun.
“You could never understand what I saw! Her eyes, they were open and her hands were cold as frost. She was lifeless, Cassius, and I had to see her falling apart,” Ivy said as her eyes began to swell up again.
“You have to stop this. Beating yourself up isn’t going to bring her back, Ivy.”
No matter how hard I would try, my sister constantly thought she was to blame only because she was our mother. It was not only annoying but made it harder to move on nonetheless. I decided to leave her alone with her thoughts and try again later. Time is what she needed and no matter how hard anyone tried, Ivy wasn’t ready to budge.
With a glass of water in my right hand and a piece of gently buttered toast in the other, I made my way down to the living quarters where I had pictured my parents sipping their morning coffee and hearing my mother’s laugh carry into the hallway. Only this time, it was only my father drinking his coffee, staring at my mother’s empty seat to his left and her already made tea in her favorite maroon coffee mug.
“Good morning father,” I said in a mumbling tone as I tried to stop myself from staring at my mother’s empty chair. My father said nothing as he took another sip from his coffee mug, still breathing heavily and tapping his foot on the floor beneath his navy-blue slippers.
“You do realize what this means, Cassius,” he said as his eyes didn’t move from the previous starting point. He remained emotionless, lifeless, and smelt of despair.
“No, what does this mean?” I asked in an acknowledging manner. I walked toward my father and gravitated toward my mother’s chair, placing a hand on the chair’s shoulder, as if my mother was still sitting there.
“The throne, it must be seated again for our family,” he said, meeting my eyes with his. He sighed as he reached for the crown that sat in front of him on a bleached wooden coffee table. He admired the stones and the pointy tips that acted as a tent for each jewel that sat upon the crown.
“But you’re still the king,” I said, raising an eyebrow to my father’s harmless motion of dignity.
“It doesn’t work like that, Cassius. It is written in the Creed that in the account of the death of the king or queen, the firstborn child must take the throne in order to rule the kingdom.” My father’s eyes met mine as he placed the crown back on the table and stood tall in front of his chair, looking down at the empty seat.
“Your mother would have wanted this,” he said, placing a hand on the arm of the chair.
“Wanted what exactly? This makes no sense, you’re still the king, we still have a ruler for Morkaia and that would be you,” I said, as the anxiety built inside my chest.
“Under the Creed, I am no longer king because your mother is—” He stopped himself as his head fell down in sadness. “Because the Creed says the firstborn must take the throne, it makes things complicated.” My father walked toward the large window that looked over the Kingdom of Morkaia. With his hands folded behind his back, he muttered the words I wish I would never have to hear my father say.
“You and Ivy will battle for the throne.”
Chapter 1

Ivy
I knew it wasn’t my fault that she was dead but I couldn’t help but think about how I didn’t see this coming. She was my best friend and she didn’t even tell me she was sick nor hurting. My mother and I were extremely close and I felt as if I lost the most important person in my life.
I sat in bed for what seemed to be days after her death. I constantly cried, thinking of her smile and how much we loved to walk in the garden before the sun had risen. I had to let g