Once upon a time there was a king. He had a good life, a beautiful queen, and a baby on the way. But for some reason he wasn’t satisfied with this so he slept with the court sorceress who was a friend of the queen’s and got her pregnant. For some reason the queen forgave her husband and her friend when she found out. The sorceress was allowed to continue living in the castle with her son who was treated like a true prince rather than the bastard he was. Perhaps this was why he felt so entitled to the throne despite the law against bastards being able to take the throne. He begged his father to legitimize him and always his answer was one day but not today and he believed him. That is until one day when the king was killed in a hunting accident before ever making good on his promise.

As his only legitimate heir his daughter succeeded him on the throne. His son was of course not happy about this. Though he had never found a reason to hate his sister he now hated her with all his being. As much as he wanted to kill her he knew it wouldn’t do any good. If he killed her another person who was not him would simply take her place on the throne. He would have to kill the entire royal line before it would do any good and that just wasn’t feasible. So instead he played nice around everyone else, but when he was alone he let himself stew in his anger and cruelty. The years went on. His sister got married and he eventually replaced his mother as the royal sorcerer.

One day the queen came to him in tears asking for help. She and her husband had tried and tried and tried to have a baby, but as much as they tried they had not succeeded and maybe there was some sort of spell that could help them? The gears began to turn in the sorcerer’s head as he considered the opportunity the queen was offering him. He agreed to give her a spell if she agreed to give the child she bore to him to be his apprentice when they turned sixteen. She accepted his magical contract unaware of any reason she might have to distrust her brother and he whipped her up a spell.

The spell worked just as he promised it would and before long the queen was with child. Everyone rejoiced, even the sorcerer for his own reasons. Months later the queen gave birth to a radiantly beautiful baby boy and that baby was me.