Prologue

The snow fell heavy and hard outside like a beast that raged. The winds of the storm slammed against the brick walls. It howled it’s outrage when they did not fall to it’s mighty blows.

Those within ignored it as they went about their business. Their day would carry on no matter the weather outside. For the lords of the manor that could not be anymore true. Bryan did what he had always done when his mother was feeling truly ill.

“The violets gone with the year’s innocence,” Bryan recited the last line of the poem. He glanced up to see the pleased expression on his mother’s face. She looked more relaxed than she had been when his father had visited her earlier that day.

She looked no different to his eyes from when he had been a boy. Despite the fact her hair was no longer golden like his own. Lines were etched into her pale skin. The magic had done that to her like acid cutting away at metal. It aged her too quickly, taking away pieces of her life as it did.

Still, she looked the same to him as when he had been a boy. Nothing could change the beauty that he knew her to be. It was only for her that he even wrote poetry.

His poetry had had that effect on her for the longest time. It was almost as if it healed something broken inside her for a time. It was why he still pursued the hobby when he found no real passion for it.  He did so much for her smile.

“Do you truly like the flowers?” he asked her when he noticed how she fingered a petal from the violets in her hands.

They only seem to grow from her gentle touch, which worried him. They both knew that she wasn’t allowed to use any of her magic. She lost too much of it day by day, her body no longer able to hold it within.

“I love them, my dear. They were your grandmother’s favorite as well, so much so she insisted I was named after them.”

“Really? You never told me that before,” he muttered as he glanced at his grandmother’s portrait. It had clearly been created in his Grandmother’s youth since she looked no older than him. She mirrored his mother in almost every way.

His grandmother looked so happy with a sleeping in her arms. The violets were abloom around them. “She said that they lead to happiness if you let them.”

It was clear that she had caught his glance as she gave him a smile before looking at the portrait herself. Bryan wondered what she saw when she looked at it. It seemed that she could read his mind in that moment. “I love this painting, we would take so many together with your aunts and uncles. Your grandfather could never get enough of looking at her.”

“I wish we could have visited them.” It was bittersweet to be important to a nation. One was often restricted to their own lands when the desire to travel was upon them. To even go to Scotland would take at least two or three days to get permission.

“They would have loved that, but they knew it meant when I married your father.” There was no sadness in her eyes or smile. She had never once expressed a desire to see her homeland to him.“I truly do love the flower, my dear…I just wish that you would take about giving them to a lady.”

“Mother…” he groaned in despair.

“Or give someone some of your poetry, you have such a talent for it.” He saw the teasing curve in her smile.

“Ladies are exhaustingly dull, mother.” He thought of how all the young ladies that he had met. Their conversations were always about the latest gossip or fashion. They never wanted to have a real conversation with him.

“Oh? Why is that? Most men love to be surrounded by beauties or that had been my experience when I was your age.”

“I never said that I didn’t like the look of them. They just bore me, they always want to talk of the most useless things,” he explained.

She didn’t seem impressed by that . “Men prefer to keep their daughters ignorant of important matters and like to keep their wives as decoration.”

“Few have your intelligence, mother.”

Her expression became somber at his words. “That’s ignorance, Bryan. A girl rarely has the opportunities that your grandfather gave me.”

He looked at her as he thought of her words. It seemed foolish to ignore the intelligence of a girl if it was there. “Englishmen aren’t that wasteful, mother.”

“Well, maybe your betrothed will give you what you want,” she said with a smile.

He glared at her for the mention of the woman that he would marry one day. “That bluestocking would talk my ears off if given the chance.”

He thought of all the rumors that he had heard of her. She was a bluestocking through and through, ignoring people for her literary interests. He needed a wife that could make and maintain connections. Instead he would marry a woman that would prefer to be locked away in a library.

The somber expression returned with a glare at his words. “She is more than a bluestocking, Bryan. She is a rather accomplished young woman and I find her quite interesting.”

That hadn’t been what he had heard of her but he wouldn’t repeat those rumors to his mother. She would scold his ears off if he did. Still, he found himself saying, “I have little interest in her accomplishments, mother. I’m marrying her to have children, remember? I’m not marrying her for love like others do.”

She turned paler at his words and pain sparked in her pale green eyes. “You can still fall in love with her if you didn’t constantly avoid her like you do. It’s been years since you last saw one another.”

He looked away from her as he thought of her words. He knew that he could never love the woman that he was betrothed to. At least not when he was in love with another woman. If only his love was a Kore like his betrothed than he would marry her without question. It was a tragedy that she wasn’t.

the prince regent was too afraid to lose his bloodline, too afraid at the slim chance that his children would not have his magic.

If not for prince, no one could stop them from heading to Gretna Green.

“Not to a woman like her. She’s everything a lady shouldn’t be after all. She’s too common for me to ever love her,” he informed his mother.

“That’s cruel of you to say, Bryan and it hurts me to hear you say that.” She slumped against her pillows as if their conversation weakened her. “She was born a commoner alongside her parents, yes but she’s more than that. They have worked hard-”

“To be upstarts, I know. The common man should say in their place, mother and they didn’t because of her.” It was only the fact that she was a Kore that had allowed her to move pass those barriers.

Barriers that were there to keep the balance of their nation. It was the bloodlines that made sure that everything was in balance with the world. Yet it was new blood and power like his betrothed that usurped that balance.

His mother’s expression only turned more grim to his eyes. “You sound like your father.”

“Is that a bad thing?” he questioned.

He noticed her hand gripped the duvet hard as she answered. “Yes. I want you to be happy in your marriage unlike ours.”

His parents’ marriage had been a poor one. Many thought it was because of the bride. His mother was a foreigner from Spain, procured when there hadn’t been a single Kore for his father to marry.

It had been all about producing a product that would do their bloodlines proud. In that moment, he felt like he was a failure from how his mother looked at him.

“You must live a life with happiness, Bryan,” she begged. “I couldn’t bare it if you were to live without it.”

“…mother, duty comes before happiness,” he muttered. He thought of the woman that he loved in that moment and knew he was a hypocrite.

He wanted to do his duty and be with the woman that he loved. He could not have one but could do the other.

“You’ll end up living your life with so many regrets if you do that,” she informed him. She almost seemed to be fading faster than he had ever seen before.

“Let me get the doctor, mother,” he said softly.

“No need…but you will get your father for me. It’s clear that he and I have things that we need to discuss,” she ordered.

She looked so small and fragile to him. The bed that she had barely left in months, swallowed her. She only seemed to become more so  as the cold months dragged on. It was so unlike how she had been only a few years before.

She had never been well, at least not in his memory. But she had never been as sickly as she had become this cold winter. It felt like it was choking the life from her.

“I truly think the doctor would be better for you right now, mother.”

“Bryan, I am your mother and you will obey me. Go. Get. Your. Father. Now,” she ordered with steel in her voice. Though, she still looked too pale and weak. There was something unbelievably power in her as if the magic within strengthened instead of drained.

Bryan found he could not disobey her in that moment. Not when she appeared so much stronger than she had before. He would do anything to keep his only loving parent with him for as long as he could.

“…Fine, I’ll go and get him for you now then.” He turned to walk out then but she called out his name. He turned to look back at her, to see the serious look in her eyes.

“You are my treasure, my dear. I will do everything I can to see to it that you will be happy…now go.”

He found himself unable to. Those words felt like a…goodbye and filled him with fear in that moment. He would have gone back to her, to demand answers from her yet her eyes stopped him. How those eyes demanded that he obey her, even when he only wanted answers.

It was like a power chained him to her order and he was forced to obey.

The Glass Flower Chapters The Glass Flower Chapter 1