Chapter 1

Syrah dreamed of being as free as the wind. Instead she was a maid for the cruelest family in the kingdom. Her kingdom, Mareya, was once a magnificent, opulent kingdom but was now filled with starving, impoverished people. The ruler, King Hexton, was savage, greedy, and power-hungry. During his rule he taxed the people to death, sometimes quite literally, and imposed punishments for not paying the full tax he was owed.

The family Syrah worked for was the Kellers. The patriarch of the family, Agris, worked as the king's head of security. He lavished in the punishments he carried out on residents and was most excited when the king ordered him to punish criminals; that's when he was most creative. The matriarch, Anula, believed in Syrah having a "good, honest work day" and would ensure she worked before the sun came up to long after it went down. The family had four children whom Syrah helped with. The youngest were 8 year old twins, Abigail and Abraham, and they took after their parents in their treatment of Syrah. They made games of trying to trip her as she carried things up or down the stairs, leaving terrible messes, and cutting holes in her clothes and shoes. The eldest child was 20 and Syrah had never met him. She knew his name was Anthony and that he worked in the castle, but he never looked back once he left his family manor; Syrah didn't blame him. The middle child, Aurora, was 17 and she tried to show Syrah kindness in any way she could. Syrah and Aurora were friends, though it was a secret from the rest of the family. The Kellers told Syrah that they bought her from a peasant girl for a small sack of grain, though she did not remember that long ago. They often took pleasure in reminding her that she was worth nothing more than that small sack of grain and told her if she became a whore like her mother they would slay any child she bear and punish her severely; as if they didn't already do that.

Syrah was a wispy girl of 16 years with long brown hair and bright green eyes. She was often whispered about because of her shockingly bright eyes. She was of average height but her favorite part of herself was that she could run as fast as the river in winter. She would sneak out to the woods on the Kellers' estate and run as fast as she could for as far as she could. She loved to feel the wind in her hair and the freedom she didn't actually have. While she was performing her duties, she would dream of the burn in her lungs when she tried to be as fast as even the gentlest breezes blowing through the trees.

Syrah had no idea the path she was on or the secrets she would discover about herself and the kingdom, but the biggest part of living is not knowing what will come.