Soul of Magic (Soul of Magic Book 1)

ONE

Kyra's hair swayed with the wind as she attempted to survey where she was and which way to go. She had tried countless times to get her hair braided and away from her face but the unruly thing just wouldn't budge, always loosening itself as if in mockery of her attempts. And added to her dilemma was the fact that she was in some sort of grassland with a very tired body and no end in sight. Just then, as if to get itself noticed, her stomach growled in hunger.

"Just hang in there, belly," she said, patting it affectionately. "I just have to find us a way out of this godforsaken land and you can get fed, how about that?" She wasn't sure if it was in response to what she had said but the growling stopped and she had a moment of peace to herself.

Contrary to what anyone would think at the sight of her, Kyra wasn't a homeless person. In fact, she had a very nice home; had being the operative word. She didn't need a seer to tell her that her uncle and aunt-in-law would never take her back after what she had done.

Kyra had grown up an orphan. She lost both her parents at a very young age, so young, in fact, that she had no memory of how they looked, or anything else about them for that matter. She couldn’t even tell which features she took from which of them or which one of them she looked the most like. They were a mystery to her, a hole which existed in her past that she had no idea of how to fill.

Fortunately, her uncle and his wife had taken her in, nursed her to maturity, given her good food to eat, a warm bed to sleep in, the best clothes they could afford. All in all, they treated her like the daughter they never had.

But even with the love they had given to her, Kyra had a problem with her foster parents which only grew worse as she herself grew older. The problem was getting her a suitor. It wasn't that Kyra wasn't beautiful; she definitely was that and more. She was of her average height, not so short that the man would have a problem with her in a public pose or so tall that he would be intimidated by it. In addition to her height, she had well-defined hips and bosoms just right of her age, dazzling brown eyes and raven-black hair that even though caused her endless trouble during styling still left the men ogling her all day long. In truth, she was very pleasing to the eyes and no one could dispute it.

The suitors themselves weren't the problem either; the line outside their house was never ending and many of them even got into bitter fights daily over her. Every man wanted her, ranging from the most famous of them to the richest, they all vied for her hand in marriage and were ready to do whatever it took to win it.

And so, the real problem, truth be told, was Kyra herself. Despite her right age and the countless suitors of standard, she just never seemed to want to pick any of them. Her aunt-n-law had warned her times without number that she had to pick a suitor soon or they would all get disinterested and leave. “No man wants a disdainful woman,” she had said to her.

But the suitors never left and Kyra never picked. Somehow, deep within herself, something nagged her that she could never settle down with any of them and be happy, and that caused her foster parents merciless headaches.

It was on one of those days when the argument was at its peak that they cornered her in the barn and told her that they had received her from one William of Fraischer, a lord from the far south of the realm, and he was coming to take her home with him in a couple of hours. Kyra had never been so enraged as she was in that moment of what she termed as pure betrayal; all she could see was red. Everything happened so fast after that.

The initial reason why Kyra was in the barn was to check on the hay they had harvested the day before; that was what she was doing when her foster parents delivered the news to her. One moment, she held a burning torch in her hand which she was using to inspect the hay; the next, she was throwing the torch into the hay and it was on fire. As if fuelled by the furnace of the underworld, the fire grew so quickly and wildly that it caught the whole barn in a matter of seconds. And then, Kyra ran.

She had been thinking about it for a very long time, even packed all her clothes into her satchel on so much occasions to leave; but she never did, not until that day.

Without thinking too much about it, she pushed her uncle and aunt-in-law out of the way, ran of the barn, grabbed her satchel from where she had stored it under the bed, and ran. Her uncle chased her down, threatened to lock her up in a dungeon till she became a grandmother, resorted to begging her to come back home before threatening her again with disowning. But Kyra never turned back. She ran into the forest and two days later, she was still running from the only people she known in the world and surviving on the berries she had picked as she passed through the forest. Unfortunately, the forest was now very far behind her and unless she ate some real food soon, she probably wouldn't see another sunrise again.

Just then, as if in answer to her predicament, the smell of cooked meat suddenly wafted through the air.

"Food!" she exclaimed, putting her nose in the air and sniffing like a dog as she attempted to find the source. And she stumbled onto a footpath in the grassland; one she never would have found without luck. "Yes!" she exclaimed again as she saw fresh boot prints, and even a cart trail. Prints meant people, and people meant food; she had saved herself.

As if by an unknown source, strength coursed through her body and she ran down the path, laughing as she went. The wind picked up speed and the grasses swayed with it, their rhythm mixing almost as if they were cheering alongside Kyra. But she took no notice of them. All that was on her mind was that she survived, even as she knew little of how important it would turn to be.