Quote:

---

Go you. I've cracked early, too long at work and then domestic responsibilities, ah to be a hermit...

---

Quote:

---

A young girl is kidnapped from her home world and is taken to another, where her half-sister is attempting to take over the throne. As she grows up she must break free of this control, find her mother, and stop her half-sister from taking over the kingdom.

---

Quote:

---

After Eron had left, Grace walked into the music rooms, lost. Everything here reminded her of Samen. There was the piano he had lovingly played so many years ago. And the harp: his favoured instrument. She ran a hand gently over its smooth wood and taut strings, and tensed as she imagined him playing it that day when she first saw him. It had been the beginning of her infatuation. His exquisite playing had ensnared her, as it must have done for so many other women before her. Now though, the strings would lie silent. She intended to make sure of that. No-one would play this harp. Not this harp, nor any others in the palace. No-one but him deserved to.

She went over to the fireplace and picked up the axe used for cutting wood. Caught by a sudden fit of rage, she ran her hands down the strings and then raised the axe. She was ready to sever the strings as Riaka had so ruthlessly severed his head. His favoured instrument would die as he had. The crunch of the wood splintering and the twang of the strings snapping hurt her more than she would have thought. She had just destroyed something capable of producing a sound that would touch anyone. It would never bequeath its gift of music again on the world. It hardly seemed fair, but to her it was adequate revenge. Beauty had no place in this world any more.

She spent the next hour systematically destroying everything in the rooms capable of creating music. Every single instrument, every single piece of music, and even the beautiful paintings on the walls were destroyed, their beauty ruined forever by the slash of the axe that she wielded in her hands. She tore the rugs on the floor, and then littered them with the debris that now filled the room.

Her rage eventually assuaged, she stood still and looked at the ruined wreck she had made. How had she done such harm to something so great? It wasn't fair. It really wasn't. Why had she done such a thing? She leant against the wall and slid down it, wracked by great sobs that would not go away.

---