St. Petersburg, Russia
1855
Five years had passed since I married Sir David Trichenberg against the wishes of his siblings. During that time, Czar Nicholas I had died and his son, Czar Alexander II, had taken over as Russia's new czar. Many people, who were happy to see Nicholas go, quickly embraced their new czar. I wasn't too happy about that, knowing that Alexander and David had never gotten along, even as children; now that they are both adults in charge of Russia, things between them were now coming to a head.
At the same time, I had the misfortune of meeting Sir Bernard Kroger and his wife, Michaela; they appeared to be the most despicable people that Russia has ever seen, even worse than Alaric and Briar Hawksley. They were so cruel that everyone in the Alexander Palace made sure to keep away from them at all times. Their second daughter, Christine, was the fattest and ugliest girl I had seen in my life; she always kept her head down in shame. As for Karl, he was now a handsome young man, with a good head for strategy and politics, but his disability got in the way of his life. Bernard's parents, Michael and Sarah, appeared to be decent, but even they couldn't control their son and stop him from doing things that hurt other people.
Also, Michaela never forgive David for marrying me, even if she didn't care that her sister Noelle was dead. She sought to make my life a living nightmare as much as she could, as if I didn't suffer during the years I lived in Queen Victoria's court and with Aunt Kelly. I don’t understand what would make a woman like Michaela Kohl Kroger hate another woman like Selena Drake Farrington Trichenberg, especially if I married her brother-in-law. I am slowly beginning to realize that it’s not just the men who hurt women, but the women themselves are the worst when it comes to ill treatment. (I do understand part of her anger at her oldest daughter being taken from her and forced to be a slave, but that’s no excuse for her treating me badly.)
Despite everything, David and I had three children named Merritt, Isidore, and Rufus. My own children Terra, Thorn, and Acacia grew up in the palace with David's daughters Josseline and Bernadette. David's son Leo was being fostered with the Imperial family.
As for Phoebus and Luna, Luna had married Jerome Hawksley to mend the rift between the two families. Phoebus, however, was serving in King Ihon’s court. But he wouldn’t stop trying to get me to come home, no matter what. (That was the one order King Ihon couldn't undo; it was in very poor taste to undo the old king’s final orders.) Father and Christiana are still living with the twins in London and serving the queen and her husband. There is no word on how Jeremiah Hawksley is doing since the deaths of his parents, but I’m sure he’s moved on with his life. After all, there’s no need for him to pine over a woman who would never marry him.
But the one big thing that happened to me was that Magorious Hoffelbax of the Moonbeam Clan had come to the palace to serve the czar. He was a werewolf, and from what I heard from Aunt Kelly, werewolves were nothing but trouble. Not only did they turn into monsters during the full moon, but they could be just as dangerous in their human form. Uncle Edgar had told me many times that it was dangerous and unwise to offend a werewolf or a vampire, lest that creature could show up in your warm safe bedroom and kill you in your sleep.
Well, I never met a werewolf before, but I knew that many of them have roamed the English countryside, picking off people who were unfortunate to be caught outside on a full moon. Many people killed by those monsters simply had it coming, as the village had a curfew about being outside at night. (That curfew also extended to vampires, which were known to kill anyone unlucky to be outside at night.)
I knew I had no choice but to make an alliance with the Moonbeam Clan. Given my reputation as a disgraced Drake witch, I knew it would not be easy to build that alliance, as werewolves and witches don't exactly get along. (Everyone knows that werewolves and vampires were mortal enemies; the vampire/werewolf wars of the 1300s were proof of that.)
One day while at court, Magorious saw me and said, "I heard a great deal about you, Selena Drake. I heard that you almost singlehandedly destroyed the Hawksley family using magic."
"If you mean the magic from my maidenhead," I snapped back. I would not let this werewolf get under my skin. "The Hawksleys had cursed me when I refused to marry their son Thayer."
"Such a pity," said Magorious as he continued to stare at me. "They should have known better than to marry a Drake woman like you off to a rotten hunchbacked monster. It's a sad thing they had to pay for their sin with for their own deaths."
I shook my head, trying not to fall into this werewolf's trap. I knew I had fallen into Rafael's trap when we first met; I thought that he had liked me. I had three sons with him as a result of my foolishness, two who were taken from me and being raised in a convent and little Terra Buckingham. I thought I would gain Rafael as a lover or potential ally, but he used me to further his father's goals, which ended terribly for him and his parents.
I had been fooled once; I'll never be fooled again.
I then said, "You had better be careful, Magorious, lest I will destroy you and your clan. I will not be fooled so easily."
"You think you can take me on, witch?" Magorious laughed as he glared at me. "You wouldn't last a second against me, not if the king had bound up your magic before banishing you to this cold land."
At that remark, I frowned, wondering if King Ernaut had actually bound my magic before sending me away to freeze in the cold lands of Russia. I have heard many horror stories about what had happened to people whose magic was bound, from premature death to permanent magical damage. But so far, I haven't experienced any form of magical damage, even though I knew it wouldn't be that way for long.
David saw us and said to Magorious, "Why are you here?"
"Same as you," said Magorious. "I'm here to control Imperial Russia and its czar. While the churches and palaces may be among the most beautiful in the world, the people and politics are not. Do you want to know what it's like to have to walk down the streets of Moscow every day and see so much rampant poverty even if we are in a land of plenty? The institution known as serfdom must collapse and the people must attain their freedom. At the same time, many people living in the world are being shoved into dark rooms and hidden corridors because of their mental disabilities. There's a plot by the Elymnoreans to build an alternate settlement in the steppes of Siberia."
"What alternative settlements are you talking about?" I snapped, knowing that Siberia was much too cold to sustain human life and so many people were already living there.
"When the so-called "United States of America" was formed, there were hundreds of disabled people living in dark rooms, secret closets, and dinghy rooms in asylums," said Magorious. "But a group of Mages decided to put an end to that by removing those people from their awful home lives and bringing them to a hidden city inside New York. They have also tried to cure those people using magic."
"Is that a good idea?" I snapped, wondering if that had happened to Paxton. Did he get cured of his deformities when he was struck by lightning all those years ago?
"It should be," said Magorious.
"And you want to persuade the czar to allow that to happen?" said David.
"I very much want that to happen," said Magorious.
"Why would you want that to happen?" I said.
"Because for far too long, vampires and werewolves have killed and eaten almost a million deformed and disabled people throughout Earth's history, and how the humans have handled these people is no better. I see what they do to those people and it makes me puke," said Magorious. "I have been to the States, and the way they treat the African people makes my blood boil with rage. I have also walked among the Originals and the stories they tell me of what was done to them made me howl to the sun. I wonder if the people of the States would benefit from a plague that could wipe out their wicked race and restore the land to what it once was."
"Either that, or a war," said Ezekiel as he approached us. He then said, "The president of the United States has sent the czar a message informing him that he is tired of the czar's ignorance and arrogance. He wants him to sign the deal immediately."
"The czar will not sign the deal if he knows what he's getting into," said Magorious. "He doesn't know the suffering of over four million people on one side of this world, and yet he won't bother alleviating the suffering of the millions of serfs who work the farms. He won't force the landowners to pay their fair share. Will it have to take a war to make him see reason?"
I frowned as I watched what was happening. A potential alliance with a powerful and dangerous werewolf was a good way to either help me or ruin my reputation as a Drake witch, as if my own traitorous affair with Rafael Hickman didn't do any damage. Yet Magorious had a point; the human world was so messed up that they were no longer worthy of the Earth they lived on. They needed to be ruled over, to be controlled, to be subdued before their evil ways destroyed the world they lived in.
Had I known that David and Magorious were plotting to attack the human world, I would have either warned them or stopped them. But then I remembered how I was treated by the Norms in Queen Victoria's court and the Norms who supported King Ernaut's decision to banish me to Russia. I thought about Seth St. Claire and how his mother and sisters got him away from me and forced him to marry another woman he did not love to control that woman's inheritance. I thought about Lord Rothchester and how he had treated my mother cruelly. I thought of Paxton and how many people had wanted our family to destroy him rather than allow him to exist.
I would have told them no, but I thought of all the injustice in the world that women and deformed children must suffer. Men were not spared either, as I knew about the death of Lord Rothchester, who was abandoned by his friends and family and sent away to die in an opium den. I thought about how Fenton Hawksley and how he had treated Camilla's aunt Lucetta; she ended up shooting her husband for the abuse he saw fit to hand her. And I thought of my father, who had lost his wife to a cruel man and he couldn't do anything about it. Men aren't so bad; they have problems like everyone else. Many good men have found themselves being beaten and robbed, had their families, homes, and possessions taken from them, and were even killed just because they were men.
To me, that's not fair. Men and women have been oppressed for centuries, and we have to do something to stop the oppression or else a world-ending war would happen, which would kill all of humanity.
So what I'm saying is that had I known that world destruction was going to happen, I would have...oh, wait, I forgot something.
I don't care.
OK, at this point, we've seen how Selena had quickly descended into madness, a madness that was brought upon her failure to conform to the role of a traditional woman, whether it's her being a Drake woman or a sophisticated English noblewoman. Selena's bad decisions led to her being exiled from the country of her birth and being sent to freeze to death in Russia. But Selena had the wits to survive whatever situation she is pushed in, whether it's getting revenge for being hexed, avenging her mother's dishonor (which we never actually saw her do, but let's assume that she had a hand in the death of lord Rothchester), and even teaming up with a werewolf, especially a werewolf as dangerous as Magorious Hoffelbax.
So, what does this say about her as a woman?
As a woman, Selena realizes that she has to stand up for not just her own family, but for the oppressed people in the exiled Atlantean kingdom of Eirebul. She must also stand up for the people of Earth, most of who have no idea that vampires, werewolves, witches, mages, spellcasters, and Atlanteans are living among them. Selena has to learn to put her own interests aside and work for the greater good, mainly saving humans from the destructive path they were doomed to walk on. Yet due to her lack of knowledge about humanity (thanks to the magical world's ignorance and unwillingness to learn about the nonmagical world), Selena ends up making things worse for everyone.
But that's not what this story is about.
Selena discovers that due to her exile, her family is forced to deny her existence and continue with their own lives as per King Ernaut's final orders. Her sister Luna marries a Hawksley, bringing an end to the Drake-Hawksley conflict. Her father and stepmother are still living in London. Her brother Phoebus refuses to give up on her and plots to bring her back to England, which is a violation of the order regarding Selena's exile.
As for Selena's companion Camilla Mallor, she married a nonmagical man named Ulysses Berkeley in 1850 shortly after Selena was banished to Russia. They had four children named Marcellus, Olin, Manley, and Orlo. For her part in exposing the Hawksleys, Camilla was stripped of her magic and sent to Scotland shortly after her marriage; she and Selena would never meet again. Camilla died in 1854 after miscarrying a deformed daughter, who also died. Her mother, Gertrude Vectem, stepped in and helped raise her grandsons.
At the same time, there is also talk about how best to deal with the problem of slavery in the United States; most people agree that slavery was a terrible crime against the people of Africa, but no one is able to agree on how best to resolve that issue without resorting to war. Magorious Hoffelbax (the cruel werewolf featured in the story "The Flaming Czar & the Magicborn") wants to unleash a powerful plague that would wipe out 75% of the population of America while Selena's husband Sir David Trichenberg wants to attack the country outright. Many people in the Russian court take their sides, yet Selena believes that there could be a better way to handle that issue. But her way of handling the issue of slavery leaves a lot to be desired.
At the same time, however, Selena learned a difficult lesson about family loyalty when she was sent away from England. Did you see her father or sister protest the decision made by the king when he decided to banish her to Russia? Well, while Lucius and Luna protested the decision and Queen Victoria voiced her objections to sending a young woman and three small children to Russia (as she was a mother), King Ernaut was determined to punish Selena for causing trouble for his kingdom. Sometimes I wonder what he had against Selena, other than her decision to betray the Hawksleys. Did he side with the Hawksleys or was he under pressure by the council to punish someone for causing trouble? What made him choose to send Selena to Russia instead of Barbara and Rafael Hawksley?
Looks like we'll never know the answer to that question.
Also the part about Anna Kroger being sold as a slave for sparing her brother Karl instead of killing him was very painful for me to write, as no girl should be forced to be a slave or to kill her own brother. I especially hate Bernard for inflicting that kind of harm on his own children; he will pay for that hateful act with his own life.
But that's not the story I have to tell.
But now comes the time when the American Civil War must take place, and with that war, Selena must learn the difference between helping a group of people and destroying another group of people for various reasons.
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