Before the Dawning, all I wanted was to fall in love and live my own life away from my family and all its dark secrets. My name is Twylla and here is my story.

Chapter One: History

Lord and Lady Fonté looked and acted just like any other couple of the court save for the fact that Lady Fonté was the King's youngest sister. Their parents King Frederick and Queen Maggie were beloved by the people however only a small few knew of Queen Maggie's dark secret, she was a siphoner- she could suck all the love and happiness out of anything and leave the poor victim empty. For the first two years of her life, she stole more and more love and happiness from her parents until at the age of nine they were empty, Lord and Lady Pearl were nothing inside like ghosts. They only a few years later leaving Maggie's twenty-year-old brother with the title Lord Pearl and an eleven-year-old Maggie. On her eighteenth birthday, she became engaged to the Dauphin of Ember (the kingdom she lived in) and married him later in that year. No one would have believed it possible but Maggie did fall in love with Frederick.

Only ten months into the marriage a royal baby boy was born, Prince Serpens of Ember. She knew straight away that Serpens, her precious baby boy, was not a siphoner. A year later another baby was born, Princess Taygete or Tiggy as her nickname came to be. Five years later and another three girls were born, Princess Bonnie (Bon), Princess Lilliam (Lily) and Princess Olympia. By this point, Queen Maggie was only twenty-four. None of her five children had shown any signs of siphoning yet, however, she knew fate would curse her children with her 'gift' as her husband called it, who turned out to be immune to her 'gift'. Another couple of years later and Maggie was absolutely certain of two things; one that this was the last baby she was having and two that this child would be a siphoner since none of her other six daughters had inherited it. When Alexandrina, who along with her twin Cassiopeia had just turned three, touched her stomach one day and suddenly started to cry, for a moment she could see all the love and happiness disappear from Drina's eyes. And so Princess Aurelia of Ember was born on a cold winters night.

From that day onwards Aurelia (Ella) never left Maggie's side in case she touched someone and accidentally siphoned them. Ella had a lonely childhood in her small bedroom right next to her parents' instead of in the nursery corridor where all her siblings' were. The only times she saw her ever growing and changing siblings was at family dinners on the last Friday of the month. On Ella's nineteenth birthday she was married off to a man below her station and became Lady Aurelia Fonté of Nova. Ella and Louis, her husband, had four children; Phillip, Blaise and the twins Star and Twylla.