Callista

For what had seemed to me an eternity I had been standing outside my father’s door knocking continually, my heart pounding with a crazy beat of fear and expecting the unknown. The muffled voices coming from within had ceased, and a new sound had taken their place – the grunts and groans of an actual fight: the screeching of the table legs, the rustling of the clothes, and a clatter of something pouring to the ground. The cries of my father for his guards were what led me here, cries that sent a shiver down my spine.

The cold marble floor of the palace felt colder, colder than it...