Marked for Darkness
Prologue

Long ago, on a little planet called Scondelade, ruled a cruel king, and a humble queen with their eleven sons—all of them, trained soldiers.

News in the galaxy spread about a wicked Empress named Onoliza. She rose from her own planet, Szcourgia and began conquering others. It was her dearest wish to rule every galaxy, and for every creature that resided within them to bow before the Empress. No one that challenged the Empress lived.

The cruel king prepared for war with his sons, and soon, Onoliza appeared on Scondelade in a shower of brilliant bolts of lightning.

War raged, destroying much of the planet, and though the Empress was not the fastest, nor the most skilled fighter, she and her armies possessed magic stronger than the citizens of Scondelade. The Empress soon slew the king and queen. But when Onoliza saw the eldest prince, Dominicus, she smiled. For he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen.

She bargained that she would spare he and his brothers if he gave himself to her as a slave. The eldest prince was far too proud to ever bow before another, and he refused. Outraged, the Empress cursed all eleven of the brothers to live for all eternity, like her; but during the final cycle of the moon, they would transform into monstrous creatures, enslaved to rage and bloodlust.

The eldest prince and his brothers soon fled, in search of a way to break the curse. To many worlds they journeyed until an old seer told them of a planet far away filled with legends, myths of curses and magic ran rampant. There, the prince, Dominicus, learned of the mortal lineages that every few generations, birthed a human so powerful, they’d be able to break the curse, but in order to do so, they’d have to pour out their life blood.

As the princes awaited the mortal with such magic, they soon fell prey to all the worldly pleasures that strange new world had to offer. They became kings, feared and desired by all.

When their curse transformed them, each waning before the moon disappeared from the sky, they laid waste to the humans, seeking to sate their eternal hunger, but they only became more ravenous.

Wracked with guilt, Dominicus began his quest to await the one that could undo their curse. A wise crone met with the prince and told him that in order to undo his curse, he and his brothers would die.

The second eldest prince, Oricus, did not wish to end his own existence, and the brothers split into two clans. Centuries passed, and any who were born with the power to threaten Oricus’s reign was eliminated. Hundreds of years slipped by with no magical offspring to release him from his immortal curse. Until Prince Dominicus happened upon a woman whose womb was swollen with a babe.

And the magic the child possessed called to him. He sought to protect the unborn human, cloaking the mortal family by any means necessary.

At last his brother’s cruelty would end.

Until one night, a baby girl was born into the world of mortals…