Chapter One, Lilith:

Lilith never liked her uncle's castle. She didn't belong there, and it wasn't like her uncle kept it a secret. Although he made it look like he loved her to the public he never made any effort to listen or properly see her, and he made all the servants do things like choose her governess or make sure that she is doing well in her classes.

 Lilith had been sent to live there when she was seven, when her parents were killed by the king. She was now fifteen. Lilith looked around her room, it was mostly made of wood, her desk was in the left corner, on her desk, her parchment and ink were still out, and her candle was still burning. It was night, approximately 3 hours since her Governess, Mrs. Rochefort had told her to go to sleep, if she knew the Lilith was still awake, she would have been livid.

Lilith was sitting on her pink bed in her night gown humming to herself and trying to read the book Mrs. Rochefort had told her to read the day before. Her cat Esmeray was sitting on her lap and purring contentedly. Esmeray was a small black cat with a white chest, white paws and bright, jade-green eyes, almost the same colour as Lilith's own eyes. Lilith was struggling with her book. She didn't know why she couldn't read but when she tried the words went all fuzzy and swam around the page. Mrs. Rochefort was often furious when Lilith complained that she could not read, claiming that reading was a privilege and that she was being ungrateful for the gift that God had given.

Lilith twined her fingers in her necklace, it was a beautiful necklace, made of gold and emeralds that had belonged to her mother before she had died. Just then Mrs. Rochefort came through the door, giving Lilith quite a fright and exclaiming, "Lilith! Why in the lord's name are you still awake! Mrs Rochefort was old, her face sagged, and it crinkled whenever she made any expression, she had brown hair that was getting progressively greyer and was always tied up in a tight bun. Her eyes were a greyish hazel colour.  Lilith tried to look as innocent as possible, "uh, I was just practicing my reading" "Oh don't tell me that, I don't believe a word of it! Now blow out that candle and get into bed." declared Mrs. Rochefort in an outraged tone, gesturing violently to the candle on her desk. Lilith did as she was told, she stood up, walked over to the candle, blew it out, got back into bed and pulled the covers right up to her chin.

"This is the third time this week that you have been found doing the exact opposite of what you have been instructed!" Continued Mrs. Rochefort, her face now a deep shade of something like purple. "What would your uncle think of this!" ‘He wouldn't care anymore than usual’ Lilith thought, but didn't dare say it aloud, instead she said, "I'm sorry Mrs. Rochefort, it won't happen again." "I should hope not!" Mrs. Rochefort answered, opening the door and walking through it. "I will see you in the morning!" And with that she slammed the door closed and stormed down the hall to her own bedroom. Lilith sighed, closed her eyes and tried to go to sleep.

The birds chirped outside Lilith's window as she slowly dragged herself into a sitting position. Eyes still bleary with sleep she flopped out of bed and trudged to her mirror. She rubbed her eyes, clearing them enough for her to see her reflection, she looked terrible. Her hair wavy blonde was a mess of unbrushed curls, and she had dark bags under her emerald, green eyes, ‘ugh’ Lilith sighed internally, Mrs. Rochefort was not going to be happy.

Looking out the window, the trees outside were full of pretty birds, and the plants were covered with dew. But the view was missing the wildness and freeness that came with a naturally grown forest. Here the trees were planted meticulously and left no room for imperfections. Lilith missed the freshness that came with the forest. She missed her girlfriend Ash and the nymphs, Jamie, Ivy, especially her best friend Briar. Oh, how she hated this place.

Lilith got changed, brushed her hair (an extremely painful process) and went down the hall to breakfast.  Once she was in the room she looked around, sniffing the air. The breakfast room always smelt amazing at breakfast, the smell of pastries and fruit filling the air. Lilith sat down at the old dark oak table that they normally ate breakfast at and waited for her food to arrive.

A young maid slipped through the doors a couple minutes later, balancing dishes of bread, jam and butter on their slim arms. She was beautiful, with her chocolate brown hair tied in a fancy bun at the back of her head, she wore a loose black dress and a dark grey apron. She had large, doe eyes that were at present fixed on the floor.

“Hello, thank you very much,” said Lilith. The maid looked up at her, the surprise obvious in her dark eyes. “why are you talking to me?” she whispered. She snapped he mouth shut suddenly. “I’m sorry that was rude, I won’t speak to you again.” She started walking out the room.

“What? Why?” Lilith exclaimed. The maid turned around and looked at Lilith, confused. “I’m your servant, I shouldn’t be talking back to you, you are above me.” She said, then abruptly turned and speed walked out the door.

Lilith sighed she would never get used to the servants treating her like she was better than them. She wasn’t, if anything they were better people than her. She didn’t think she was better than them. After all they were both human, they both had two arms, two legs, two eyes, a nose and a mouth. She didn’t see why what colour people’s skin, what gender or how wealthy they were changed how important they were. She thought that everyone should be equal since one of her best friends, Tori, had dark skin and Tori was better than Lilith at lots of things and yet Tori was often treated as if she were completely unimportant by most non-magical people.

Lilith heard a cold voice behind her say “Good Morning Lilith, lovely day isn’t it.” She turned around to see her uncle standing behind her. Her uncle had greying black hair, a greying black beard and emerald, green eyes, the same colour as her own eyes. He had turned fifty-two last Monday and had thrown a large party that was so over the top it had made Lilith want to be sick. She wandered what her uncle was doing there. He hardly ever talked to her, usually avoiding her at all costs. “Mrs Rochefort told me what you were doing last night.” Ah, that was the reason, when her uncle talked to her it was normally because he wanted to express some sort of displeasure that he had with her behaviour. She wasn’t used to going to sleep so early. Before her parents died, she used to stay up late every night and, if the sky was clear, go stargazing, but she was in her uncle’s house now which meaned she had to follow his rules. “I’m sorry Uncle Jonas, I’ll do better it won’t happen again.” “Good.”  That was all, he only said ‘Good’ and then walked away, but Lilith was used to him ignoring her. She didn’t really know what to call her uncle since when she arrived, he hadn’t introduced himself, so she just called him ‘Uncle Jonas’ and left it at that.

After breakfast she went upstairs to her classroom, inside Mrs. Rochefort was waiting, somewhat impatiently, for Lilith. “How long does it take to eat breakfast!” She exclaimed waving her arms around like a windmill. Lilith suppressed a giggle, Mrs Rochefort looked quite funny when she was angry. “Sorry, Uncle Jonas wanted to talk to me.” Lilith apologized, hoping that Mrs. Rochefort would calm down. “Yes, I told you that he wouldn’t be happy about your behaviour.” “Yes, Mrs. Rochefort, I suppose you did” Lilith tried not to be angry at her governess, she had been naughty, even if only a little bit, but she didn’t think that it was necessary to tell her uncle. And really what did they expect when they kept her in this awful, stuffy castle. She wanted to be free, to run around the forest with her friends playing arrow tag and collecting berries for Roberta, the old witch that lived in the forest. But she was stuck in the castle and complaining wasn’t going to get her anything, besides extra homework, so she got her ink, quill, and pencil out and tried to look like she was enjoying the extremely boring lesson about magical history.

She wasn’t going to pretend she was listening to the lesson. She tried to, but eventually Mrs Rochefort’s voice turned into a background noise, and she started staring out the window. From her classroom window she could see the old oak tree where a beautiful white dove was sitting on one of its branches. WAIT, WHAT! In any other circumstance this would not seem out of the ordinary however this dove, one: was holding a piece of parchment and two: looked a lot like Lilith’s friend Jamie, when she transformed into a dove. The dove, a.k.a Jamie, flew towards the window, being very careful not to be seen by Mrs. Rochefort, and pressed the parchment against the window. Lilith sighed; she had trouble reading from up close let alone from afar. But if Jamie was going to the effort of flying to her uncle’s castle and getting the note to her it was probably important. Lilith could barely figure out what the letter said but after a little while and a lot of discrete squinting she could tell that it said:

Meet Briar, Ash and I at Roberta’s cottage at 12:45 pm. Don’t be late. :)

Lilith wondered why Jamie would need to see her. She certainly wasn’t complaining, but it wasn’t every day that your best friends sent a dove to tell you to sneak out of your uncle’s castle late at night to meet them in a forest. She continued to wonder this in till she heard Mrs. Rochefort’s voice shout “Lilith, are you listening to me!” “Uh… yes Mrs. Rochefort” she replied. “Well, I would thank you to carry on listening in till the end of this lesson” Mrs Rochefort turned to the chalk board, which was now covered in drawings of the ‘evil’ magical people, and continued lecturing Lilith, leaving her to plan that night’s escape.

Lilith had prepared all day for that night. She had left the window open in the kitchen so that she could sneak out that way. When it was time for her to go to bed, she waited for Mrs. Rochefort to leave “I don’t want any mishaps tonight okay, its straight to bed!” she had warned Lilith before blowing out the lanterns that were lighting up the room and closed the door. Lilith waited a couple of seconds before doing anything, just to make sure that Mrs. Rochefort was really gone, then she went to her wardrobe, opened it and pulled out her sword. Her sword had belonged to her father, it had a gold, rose gold and silver handle, even her uncle had admitted that it was the most beautiful sword he had ever seen.

Lilith slowly opened the door and slipped through it, looking around for anyone who might stop her from getting to the forest. She crept down the hall and pushed open the kitchen door. She walked through the door right onto the creaky floorboard. Lilith winced but luckily no one seemed to have heard. Once in in kitchen Lilith walked towards the window ledge and jumped onto it, then thrust herself through the window. She fell onto the lemon tree that grew just under the window. Lilith remembered the first time she had snuck out into the forest; she had been terrified, but she had done it several times now and was completely comfortable. It was 9:45 so she had 3 hours to get to the forest. That was enough. Lilith pulled out her map of the kingdom from her pocket. Her uncle’s mansion was in town which meant that she had to hitch a ride to the village, which was just next to the forest. The post boy normally helped to get to the forest, since he was also magical. She walked down the street to the post and waited behind a bush for the post boy to come. It was about ten minutes before he arrived in his carriage. She Lilith emerged from her hiding place and smiled at the post boy. “I’m going to the forest tonight; do you think I could ride in your carriage?” The post boy, whose name was Thomas, smiled back at Lilith and said “Of course! I was beginning to wonder when you would next go to the forest.” So, Lilith jumped into the back of his carriage and began to tell Thomas why she needed to go to the forest. Once she had finished talking, she looked up and saw Thomas’s face darken “Oh, so you haven’t heard.” he said. He wouldn’t meet Lilith’s eyes. “Wait, what does that mean?” she asked, now quite worried. “I should let your friends tell you.” Thomas turned around to face the front. They didn’t talk again the whole ride. A couple of times Lilith tried to ask him, but he wouldn’t answer her, telling her things like “You’ll find out.” or “I can’t say.”  This left Lilith to wonder what had happened, was one of her friends dead or going to be dead?

 After about 2 hours they had reached the edge of the village and were near the forest. Thomas stopped the carriage and Lilith hopped off. “Thank you” she said. Thomas smiled again but this time the smile was sadder like he was saying goodbye to a loved one for the last time. Thomas rode onwards again leaving Lilith standing there, not sure what to do with herself.