Chapter 1: Prolog

Me and Lucas lived in a small town close to Elven territory. Ten years ago, we had moved in together, and built our life.

We had a small house. Friends. A big family. Work.

I worked in a small flower shop owned by my husband's family. Lucas took care of the administration there. It was a peaceful life. We wanted children. A bunch. But something made us hesitate.

Our queen was once a good ruler, but we lived in a new era. She tightened laws and there was unrest in the country. We feared civil war and no child should have to grow up during something like that.

It didn't help that whenever I visited my parents, they asked if there was already a grandchild on the way. Every time I told them the same thing. 'Not yet. In the future. Maybe.'

By now I was thirty and my parents started to push. Luca's parents also asked more and more often. They wanted successors for the family business and Lucas was their only child. They had tried to get more, but they had only Lucas.

And Lucas? He had made friends with the sons of our neighbors who moved in a few weeks ago: Joris and Charlie. They were younger than us. Joris was twenty-five and Charlie was seventeen, but they got along well with Lucas. Especially Joris.

After some time they took him to one of their meetings with friends in a small pub, which they always visited. That was the beginning of the end.

And the beginning of this story.

It was not a meeting with friends. Joris and Charlie were part of the rebellion against the Queen and against slavery, which had existed here for centuries. Werewolves and elves lived as slaves. A horrible fate. And Joris and Charlie were messengers. Lucas, who believed in freedom, joined them. He also became a messenger. He delivered some letters for the rebellion. Quietly and secretly. But not quietly and secretly enough.

Quickly suspicion fell of all of us, and we had to flee so as not to rot in one of the Queen's prisons or pay with our lives.

So we fled.

Our destination was the steppe, but we could not pass the border guards on the border to the marshland, or those on the border to the steppe. We had to make a decision.

The decision led us to the fairy forest.

A dangerous, magical place.

My name is Molly and I'm not telling you a story about how the four of us reached the steppe. No. I'll tell you a story about how my friends fell in love with two creatures from that forest and what happened next.