Bound To Trust- Prologue.

I was standing in my nightdress, barefoot in the cold corridor. A large oak door, slightly ajar, loomed before me. A crash sounded from inside, and, panicked, I pushed it open. Before me stood my mother, still in the dress she had worn to the banquet this evening, attempting to stand tall against my father, who was throwing vases at her. Fortunately, I went unnoticed.1

" Please Marco, you must leave her be! She's just a child-"2

"Shut your mouth, woman! She's MY daughter, and I will do as I like with her!" He yelled. My mother flinched slightly, a few strands of pure blond hair coming loose from her elaborate bun. 3

"She's my child too, Marco! And I demand you leave her be! I won't let her grow up like you, you evil, heartless-ugh!" Marco brung his hand down and slapped her with such force that she was thrown backwards.4

"How dare you speak to me like that!"  He shouted, shaking with rage. “You know what I am doing is perfectly necessary if she is going to live through her 18th birthday! It may be a good long while away yet, but I need an heir who is strong and can deal with pain! Not a soft little girl who-” my mother angrily cut him short.5

“But she is a little girl! Why can’t one of the children you had by one of your other bunnys be your heir, so my little girl can be left alone? My only little girl! Why?” She cried hysterically. My father cooled off slightly, his rage fading into cold anger and hatred.6

“We’ve been through this before.” He told her, as an impatient parent might talk to a naughty child, “I’ve tested them all, even Kris, but out of them all, Sakura matched the prophecy closest by ways of lineage and held the most potential power. She is my chosen one, and, as the prophecy dictates, she will be the one to succeed me as the eternal ruler!”7

My mother, pulling herself up from the floor, snorted.8

“Oh yes, I remember now, that accursed prophecy from my family’s book. Screw that! It’s just a load of lies! None of it is true!” she screeched, receiving only silence from my father. Suddenly he turned his head and looked straight at me. I stumbled back form the door and flattened myself against the wall behind me, as if that would make me invisible. The sudden movement caused my mother to notice me also, and she too turned her head and gasped.9

“Sakura! How…how long have you been standing there?” cautiously I shuffled towards my mother.10

“Yes, that’s it Sakura, come on in and shut the door behind you. I have something I need to show you.” Tempted by the prospect of a possible gift, I obeyed. “It’s the first step of your training.” The tone of his voice sounded warning bells in my head and I stopped, the door swinging forwards and clicking shut, the only sound in the deathly silence of the room.  My father stepped over to my mother and pulled her against him by her hair, causing it to spill out of her bun and cascade over her shoulders and down her back to her waist. She cried out and he slapped his hand over her mouth, silencing her. Her hands flailed desperately, and finally they found his, and began to tug desperately at it, her sleeves slipping down and revealing thin wrists, marked with faded scars.11

“Daddy! Sop hurting her! Please! Daddy!” I said loudly, my gaze focused on the glint of fear growing in my mum’s eyes. He just smiled.12

“I’m afraid, Sakura love, that the one thing you ask of me I cannot agree to do. Otherwise, you will, quite simply, never learn.”13

I took a strand of my blonde hair and played with it nervously.14

“What? What won’t I learn?” I asked. He smiled even more and than I knew that I had just asked the exact question he had been hoping I would.  With a look of mad bloodlust in his eyes he drew his sword from it’s sheath with his free hand and weighed it menacingly. 15

“ That, love, is exactly what I intend to teach you now. You must learn, as soon as possible, that to survive in this harsh world you must be able to fight your own battles, to stand on your own two feet. You must know that letting people get too close to you is dangerous, as they will only weaken you.” He was now tapping the tip of the sword against the floor, each loud clank making my body shake more and more. “And this… this is what happens to those who I believe are trying to make you weak.” And with that, he plunged the glinting sword into my mother’s back, and all the way through her body so it emerged out her stomach. Her eyes widened in shock and pain, and she reached out to me as she fell onto her knees, opening her mouth as if to say something, but instead, a trickle of blood emerged. When the sword was jerked free from her body she tipped forward and landed heavily on the floor, blood spurting form the gaping hole in her stomach, and pooling on the floor. Her eyes were staring blankly at me, the usual light which illuminated their gaze snuffed. Her right hand had landed a foot or so from my feet, and I stared at it in horror, looking from my father and his bloody sword, to my mother lying in a pool of blood, to her pale, lifeless hand before me in a confused circle. What was going on?16

It was just then that I felt something snap inside of me, like floodgates opening wide, and a sudden rush of emotion sent me down onto my knees. Anger, loss, fear and hate all pulsed through me, bringing tears to my eyes and making me feel sick and light-headed. Sobbing, I crawled through blood to my mother’s dead body and gently pushed her over onto her back. I put my ear to her mouth in the hope that she might come back alive, but had no response. All the life left my soul. I felt empty inside, no longer alive.17

“No.” I whispered, “No, mum, you can’t be dead, you just can’t be! It’s not right; you said that you’d never leave me, that you’d always be there for me, always! You promised!” I led down in the blood next to her, willing my father to take my life too, so I could be with her again. But he did nothing but wipe his sword clean of blood and re-sheath it while looking down at me, smirking.18

It’s all his fault, I suddenly realised, he took her away from me. Everything I had previously felt was suddenly overcome by a pulsing, raging loathing. 19

“You. I hate you!” I said, standing slowly and glaring at the murderer who stood before me. His smirk developed into a grin and he looked down at me, his face smug. Then the rage and hate inside me escaped, and I was enveloped in flame, my eyes glowing with power. “Why did you kill her?” I yelled. “Why?”  I aimed my hands at my father, and streams of flame flew from my fingertips, scorching him and throwing him backwards into a table. But then, without any warning, the flame ceased to flow and in it’s place came torrents of ice-cold water, pinning my father against the wall. When the water stopped, he seized his chance to quell my power and dashed forwards. He took a firm hold of both of my wrists and punched me, hard, in the face. From my nose came torrents of blood and my vision clouded over. All the power I had previously been using as an offensive weapon subsided and concentrated on healing my wounds all of it’s own accord. 20

“Are you quite finished?” My father asked me, his rage evident in the tone of his voice. I looked at him with frightened eyes and slowly nodded my answer. “Good.” He knew he had control again. “Now, Sakura, what is your exact opinion of red hair? Or rather, blood red hair, I should say.”21

I nearly choked. I was expecting a more violent punishment…what was going on?22

“ummm…”23

Smiling, he turned me around so I was facing the now cracked mirror on the opposite wall, and then I really did choke. Where I had led next to my mother in her blood, patches of my hair had been soaked red. Those patches were now growing, dying my whole head crimson.24

“That will never, ever fade, my dear. Just a little reminder for you. If you should oppose me in any way, or should you do something which displeases me, I will do that,” he gestured towards my mother’s corpse, “to one of your siblings. You won’t know when, and you won’t know how, but you can be sure I will. And remember, it’s all for your own good.”25

With that chilling threat still fresh in my mind, he threw me with unnatural force into (and almost through) the wall, and then left the room. Hysterical, I crawled over the rubble, dragging my broken leg behind me, and sat awkwardly next to my mother, 6 years old, and already thinking about suicide. For how could I live knowing that I was a danger to all whom I loved? 26

No.27

I must live, for that very reason. If I was dead I would have no chance at all to save them. Who knows, with me gone, my father may do whatever he is planning to do to me to Kris, or Tori, of even Gwen or Mel. It was then that I realised that I could no longer be the carefree child that I was supposed to be. It would simply be impossible. It was time for me to grow up.28