Prologue: Summer Dream

The summer night was perfect; no humidity, a slight warm breeze, and a clear view of the starry sky. A young bride released a content sigh as she ran her hands over the cool grass from where she lay on her back. The wind tousled her long unbound hair and toyed with the hem of her dress. She closed her eyes and enjoyed her relative solitude; oblivious to the silent presence watching her.

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A northern dignitary from the east had been in the Capital City of the Empire attending councils regarding the human expansions into the Eastern Lands. He found dealings with the humans tiring. However, his duty as a diplomat restrained him from acting in a usual manner for a lord of the east. Fortunately for him, the humans in their stupidity had declared war. Upon hearing this he politely excused himself from the Capital. Now that it was official, he wanted to waste no time in preparing the provinces for battle.

As he traveled northeast towards his home in the Northern Province of the daemon lands he came across familiar surroundings. He had never been known to experience waves of nostalgia, but this land called out from his earliest memories. When he was a young cub this land had been home to his mother, a forest of trees with a large fortress hidden away inside. Human settlement had turned it into nothing more than a large manor house built on rolling grassland. He never intended to stop there but the smell of jasmine intrigued him.

He traveled silently to the back side of the manor where he found a young woman near her twentieth moon lying upon the ground. He decided that she was relatively beautiful, for a human. Her heart-shaped face was enhanced with dainty features; small eyes, nose and a rosebud mouth. She appeared to be sleeping as the wind tossed her luminous gold hair from one side of her face to the other. Dozing and haphazardly draped in a snowy white gown, the skirts around her knees, the woman appeared at her most vulnerable and he could not deny the urges that assailed him.

With swift movements he came upon her and knelt beside the warm body. A rhythmic heartbeat that was not his own resounded in his ears and his nose was filled with the scent of her jasmine perfume. Slowly her eyes opened and her lips parted in silent shock. The woman sat up and scooted away from him, as if she were shy. He smirked in amusement, agitating the young woman.

“You are trespassing,” she managed to say after a pause. Her voice was as light and airy as the wind that caressed them both and filled with indignation. He chuckled causing her to blush prettily upon her high cheekbones.

“I am trespassing, my lady, because this was the ancestral home of mother’s family. Long before you arrived here, of course, and I had a mind to visit it briefly.”

“What do you want?” she asked studying the daemon with a calm curiousness that few possessed when alone with a monster. However, monster was an inaccurate description for a perfect creature such as himself. He possessed long white-gold hair pulled back away from his aristocratic face. Electrifying violet eyes caused her to breakout in gooseflesh and for her mind to go numb.

“All I desire from you is a few hours time.” Lulled by his silken voice she lost herself completely in his gaze and hardly noticed when she ended up in his arms as he made his way towards the back entrance of the manor. She vaguely remembered ordering the servants away and directing him through the house to her bedroom.

He laid her upon the bed and, after undressing her slowly, proceeded to make love to her with the utmost care. At dawn he disappeared into the morning mist without a word. She was left only with a vivid dream of his ethereal eyes, burned into her memory, and a child born of their union.