When Our Wings Fail

By Kavi Elwyn

An endearing and obscure diary from the archives of Corroa, sharing the story of the mythical kingdom's first warrior queen. A blend of old Greek mythology and traditional fairy tales, with a spattering of a distraught teenage girl, in a diary-like setting. This charming, and easy read feels just a bit like you stepped into a cautionary tale of love and loss and the impact of Fate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kavi Elwyn
• Release date: Sep 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223176985

Book preview

Chapter 1

They say my father beat his breast in despair the day I was born. Then he threatened to strangle my mother and drown the midwife who tended her. That he cursed all the gods he knew and threw things at the servants who huddled in dark corners. For I was born a useless girl, and he had desperately wished and prayed for a son. A son who would carry on his lineage, and take the kingdom on his deathbed, a son who would be his heir. Yet he got a girl-child, useless for anything except to bind into a profitable marriage. So it was that I was branded useless at birth, and it is up to this reader to say whether I fulfilled this branding. For here I write my story, that all may see and judge, why I did what I did, and what came to pass because of it. I will make no illusions as to the bravery, or character of any of the people I introduce to you in this narrative. I will leave it to you, wise reader, to judge for yourself.

Useless though I was, Father finally calmed. They tell me- for I was too young to remember- that for a moment he held me in his arms before banishing me from sight. I was given over to an old housemaid, Babet. It was she who wrapped me in linen and laid me in a cradle. Not two nights later the castle beat with funeral drums as my mother passed into the eternal sleep from which no one wakes. So, this was how my life began, in sorrow, and perhaps that is how my life shall end.

Babet took charge of me, finding a woman to nurse me, and providing willing arms when I cried. She told me years later that I was a silent child, not given to screaming. She recalled how once I stayed quiet for days, and in my silence, she forgot me, it was only the pangs of hunger two days later that brought a cry from my lips. By my second year I had a half sister. But my memory only serves me to my fifth year, and it is here I will begin.

Father was king of Corroa, a rectangular-shaped kingdom that stretched from the mountains of Tor in the south, to the river Artius in the north. I grew to womanhood in a stone castle in the midst of Grapht, our capital city. The castle rose from behind thick stone walls and dominated the city. Only the temples were as impressive. The people consisted of three groups, the slaves, who were the lowest, the commoners, only slightly higher than the slaves, and the nobles, of which I was. The slaves came from across the sea, brought by pirate slavers and merchant ships. Father bought many of the more pleasant-looking slaves and the rest were sent to the auction in the city. Babet had been purchased twenty years before my birth; she was a stable part of castle life.

I was seven the day I received my first whipping, it was my own fault gentle reader, so do not pass your pity to me. I snuck into the Circle of Corroa, my father’s private strategy room. Circular in shape, the room was home to a few books, and dozens of charts and maps. Father retreated here with his advisors to plan out important things, and it was forbidden that anyone other than their illustrious selves could enter. I knew this, yet the allure was strong. At first my young mind simply wanted to see the great sword that was hung in the room. However, when I crept through the half open door and stood in the forbidden chamber, a bit of rebellion was born in my mind. I stole up to the great sword and reached out a hand to stroke the shining blade. It was then that the king, for here I will cease to refer to him as father, came in. He saw what I was about and roared with fury.  I was bundled out of the room by his guards and taken to the whipping post in the yard. It was only Babet’s teary pleading that saved my skin, and I was dealt only three blows. I recall the feeling so well, even to this day, of the tough leather biting into my soft skin. Babet dragged me away when it was finished and wept as she bound my back. I received many lectures from her, and the king. I was strictly punished and forbidden to ever again enter the room. Here, the reader might have seen a glimpse of the stubbornness that was to be both my blessing and my curse.

My half sister Delphia was only four at the time of the whipping, she did not understand it, and she