The king couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. He had never considered himself a bad person; despite his hateful actions towards others; despite the chilling way he talked to people below him, despite torturing and slaughtering those with magic; despite tricking the Princess of the crown, the apple of his eye, into marrying him; despite assassinating his mother and father-in-law so that he and his wife could rule; and despite poisoning his pregnant wife’s soup with the toxin that would force her body to give birth to a boy. Even after the toxin failed and not only caused her to give birth to all girls but to quintuplets. It had strained the Queen’s body to the limit. Her last words had been their daughter’s names. Prophecies. Predictions. Divinations. Forecasts for what they would be. The King had never considered himself to be a bad person until his daughters started to show power; that magic he hated. He tried to love them. He tried to raise them. But the older they grew, the more powerful they became, the more he couldn’t stand

them. Today, on their 12th birthday…. this is when the king decided he was a bad person.