Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ A Shared Curse: Blood is Stonger than Magic and Steel ❯ Prologue: The Beginning ( Chapter 1 )

A Shared Curse: Blood Is Stronger Than Magic and Steel

Everything has a beginning. Everything has something that it spawned from. And everything has something that it ties back to.

 

 

Not to long ago, in a kingdom not far from here, there was a young prince who loved his sister very much.

Prince Aoshi Sena had been truly raised to be strong, in all aspects of the word. He was cold and calculating, always thinking, showing no emotion. However, when his gaze lay on his sister's smiling face he couldn't help but soften. Little Princess Kaoru was ten years of age and already considered one of the great beauties of the kingdom. She, like Aoshi, had raven black hair. Her glistening blue eyes matched her brother's and her innocent face looked so kind next to her brother's frigid glare.

Though Aoshi was seen throughout the kingdom, the little princess was never seen without her brother. Kaoru simply refused to be in the public eye without him. When Aoshi was home, she would follow him around and cling to his hand. If he was away, Kaoru locked herself away in her little round room with the walled garden that only she could get to.

The little princess seemed to live a happy enough life, though her only friend was her brother. Kaoru didn't talk much with anyone else. Her own parents could count on one hand the times they had heard Kaoru speak. As a result, the king and queen didn't care about the girl very much. They hardly ever acknowledged poor Kaoru, leaving her in the care of her princely brother and the castle servants.

One fateful year the queen became very ill and was forced to remain abed. For months the once vibrant and beautiful queen became sicker and sicker. As the queen was wasting away in her dark chambers her daughter, pretty little Kaoru, became more beautiful and lively. The servants who had all had a hand in raising Kaoru were overjoyed with the sudden change. Kaoru began talking to her life long care takers as if they were truly her blood relatives. She met their children and made new friends. Eventually even the servants who had nothing to do with the princess in her earlier years were on friendly terms with her.

The hard working people of the castle grew happier, and thus the quality of their work improved. The castle became a happy place. Each servant or frequent lower class visitor to the castle knew Princess Kaoru and thus they all had something in common. With this revelation the workers of the castle began to cooperate more. They worked as hard as expected for the haughty nobles and their annoying children, but for Princess Kaoru they were more than willing to go any extra length to see her smile.

Despite all these new changes, Kaoru remained quiet and perhaps even a little cold to her fellow nobles. In her mind there was no reason to be kind or even talk to them for she knew they would never return this generous act. Kaoru was correct in this assumption. The nobles may love and respect the queen, but those feelings didn't seem to pass to Princess Kaoru at all. They had even become suspicious of how her sudden growth in beauty seemed to coincide with the queen's sickness. Many of them whispered among themselves that Kaoru was a witch and was the cause behind their beloved queen's sickness. Their reasoning behind this thought was that Kaoru wanted to steal the queen's beauty.

This went on for almost three years. Princess Kaoru's thirteenth birthday was drawing nearer. The servants and the people from the village just outside the castle walls were preparing a special little party for her on the village common. They were planning on sneaking Princess Kaoru out of the castle after the official ceremonies and feasts were over. Kaoru's beloved brother would usually accompany her, but he was away in a neighboring kingdom. Kaoru would have refused to go without him, but she had seen how hard the villagers had worked on this for her. She couldn't let all that go to waste.