Jareth and I jogged through the night toward the affluent side of White Sands. There were tall iron fences gatting most of the brick, multi story homes. The moon was barely glimmering in the sky, but the stars blinked brightly across the black skyscape. Trickles of light from gloss over the grassy dunes from the lighthouse. Jareth breathed heavily next to me as we trotted up to a gated home. It’s larger than the rest with a giant ‘K’ decoratively molded into the iron fence. A guard pops out of a tiny guard shack near the long metal gate.

The guard takes one good look at me and gives me a puzzling glance before returning to his shack. The guy didn’t say a single word to either of us. He just studied me and ran back into his little shack. Was he calling the police? We weren’t trespassing yet though… The gate suddenly clinked and began to open. Jareth and I stared at the little shack with so many questions, but the guard didn’t come back out. We knocked on the guard’s door to ask for permission to enter. The guy yelled at us to go ahead inside.

Jareth shrugged it off and grabbed my hand as we walked toward the front door. I felt like I was walking into a parallel universe or something the closer we got to the front door. There were beautiful, brick columns framing the large oak doors. Jareth approached the door, and I pulled him for a second. This whole thing felt off to me.

“I’m not sure we should be doing this.” I voiced my concern to Jareth.

My brother turned to me in disbelief. “We don’t have a choice, Ves. This is our lost shot to help Katherine.”

I wanted to argue with him, but I felt my hands drop from his arm. Katherine could be on death’s door right now, and the only thing that might help her is that damn medicine. Why couldn’t Katherine have been born in the District of Violet Isles? That’s where all the doctors and medicines are made. If we lived there, Katheirne might have had her medicine everyday without fail. At least, those were the rumors about the Violet Isles. Everyone had access to medicine all the time there.

Jareth didn’t wait for me to process what he was doing as he rang the doorbell. A chime of bells rang out into the night, waking any sleeping person in the house. My gut sank. I had the worst feeling building inside me as we heard shuffling on the other side of the door. There was no backing out now as I heard the door knob turn. The giant door opened slowly, and I swear my heart stopped. I was seeing a ghost. The woman standing in the door looked exactly like my dead mother…

“Mari? What are you doing out here and in those clothes? It’s past curfew!” The ghost’s voice sounded just like my mom’s, and I felt my mind shut down as I blacked out.

Several hours later…

On the edge of the White Sands slums stands a shabby, little, yellow shack. The boards of the shack have begun to peel back from the walls, and the window pans have a dark hue of age glossing over them. The little home was passed down from one generation to the next of the Fairchild family. Three generations have lived in White Sands, and the fourth generation has barely reached adulthood. Vestra Fairchild is only nineteen years old, and the second child of Victor and Stella Fairchild. Vestra’s father was an immigrant to Ashland from the neighboring Kingdom of Jerius, so he took her mother’s last name when they married. Stella Fairchild, Vestra’s mother, was considered the only child of Vestra’s grandparents, Milo and Hilda Fairchild. Vestra is part of one of the only families to survive the Kaloth Fires and watch Ashland recover since the fires ended 136 years ago.

“Ugh,” I cried in frustration. “No matter how I write down my family’s history in my introduction, it sounds horrible.”

“You can’t give up,” Count Kindly encouraged from his cozy, giant desk. A fire is crackling to life behind him as my older brother, Jareth, stokes the flames.

“Try making it more personal, Ves,” Jareth bids me to continue penning my introduction.

It’s currently four thirty in the morning, and instead of sleeping on my tiny mattress on the sandy floor, I find myself in the impressive study at the fancy house of Count Seth Kindly, the most decorated veteran and Minister of White Sands, all because he wants me to compete in the Queen’s Challenge. Well, that’s not entirely true. I am here for my little sister, Kathrine. She has terrible lungs, which get her sick all the time. There’s medicine to treat her, but like all poor people in White Sands, my family can’t afford it. My father and Jareth try to make enough money to cover Kathrine’s health issues, however, we also have bills, debts, and six mouths to feed. My mother died six years ago because of her own terrible lungs. Jareth has worked as a waiter at the Coastal Cafe since he failed his medical examination to join the military two years ago. He has a heart defect that keeps him from the best opportunity in White Sands, joining the Ashland Navy. So, I am here because my brother thought to ask Count Seth Kindly for a loan to buy Kathrine’s medicine last night.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

What I didn’t expect was Countess Syrene Kindly to answer the door and look exactly like my dead mother. Yep, we knocked on the door of a fancy house and saw the ghost of my dead mother. Except, she wasn’t a ghost nor was she my mother. Countess Syrene turned out to be my mother’s secret twin sister who was adopted out to the previous Count Kindly over forty years ago. Countess Syrene mistook me for her own daughter at first and started lecturing me the moment we met. The whole thing sounds like a twisted fairy tale, but my father later came by and confirmed the whole thing. Needless to say, the buried secret was unearthed by accident. Dad was about to pull Jareth and me out of there with promises to never speak to them again when Count Kindly stopped him. That’s when the Countess Syrene came up with a plan to help us and improve their reputation here in White Sands. It was decided by everyone except me that I would enter the Queen’s Challenge.

When they looked at me expectantly with an application in their hands, I felt trapped. Katherine, my sweet little sister, was only ten years old. She was barely living her life because she wheezed all the time. Chase, my younger brother, will qualify to take the exams for the Ashland Navy next year, and Charlotte, the sister between Kathrine and me, spent all her time studying when she wasn’t helping me with Kathrine. I was the only one who could take this opportunity, but I didn’t want to. What nineteen-year-old could rule a country? None. Nineteen-year-olds are stupid because we can’t make wise choices! Just last week, I left the market without the milk that I went there to buy. Yet, all the people in that room thought it was a good idea for me to join the competition. They guilted me into the competition with their damn pros list after only five minutes. So, I started again with the pen and paper, writing my introduction for my application.

Family. Vestra Fairchild is here for her family. Her sisters and brothers and all of Ashland are her whole heart, and here, she has a chance to improve their lives with this competition…

“Why is this so hard?” I mutter under my breath from my spot on the couch.

Jareth came over to me and ruffled my hair. “Don’t be so stiff in your writing. Just let it flow.”

Easy for him to say. He isn’t going to be on display like a doll in a beauty competition. “Has Governor Patters announced what the tests or competition will be?”

“Not officially, but the tests are the same across the districts. You will be tested on arithmetic, language, history, and writing. The tests will be given two days from now. Today is just about entering the competition with a sponsor. The queen doesn’t want anyone worrying about funds during the challenge.” Count Kindly answered.

“That sounds like she actually cares about her subjects,” my brother snickered.

Count Kindly glared at Jareth. “You don’t know anything about Queen Reia, boy. You would do your best to hold your tongue in my presence.”

Jareth raised his eyebrow at our benefactor. “Very well, Count Kindly. Would you please enlighten me about the queen’s devotion to her people? Last I heard, our country was falling apart since the king died, and she has done nothing to fix it.”

An annoyed groan came out of the Count as he stood from his seat. “You have lost someone before, haven’t you, child?”

Jareth became unsettled next to me as the image of our mother must have flashed across his mind. It didn’t help that Countess Kindly was like an exact copy of our mother. Jareth glanced at the Countess’s picture on the desk and back at the Count. “I have lost someone before.”

“Then, you know the debilitating grief that follows loss. The darkness that latches on to your soul and threatens to swallow you whole because of your devotion and love for the one you lost.” Count Kindly’s words cut into both of us.

“I do,” Jareth muttered. His voice sounded like it might break.

“Now, imagine feeling that while the greediest people of our government seek to take control over the government. Many pretend to have good intentions to curry favor. Most turn their back on the broken queen. She was forced away by her minister until they thought an appropriate time had passed for a woman to finish her grief. In two years, the districts’ problems have become exacerbated by their own politicians. White Sands is no different.” His words felt heavy in the air.

Jareth gritted his teeth. “So, the first thing she does when she comes back is have a competition for the public?”

That’s when it dawned on me how genius her plan was. “She has to,” I answered before the Count could. “It’s perfect actually. She is making a power move by selecting her successor away from the nobles. The queen is trying to earn back the love of her people while forcing the politicians to back off.”

“Very good, Ms. Fairchild,” Count Kindly looked at me with pride. “We might make a queen out of you yet.”

“Me? No, I don’t think I can actually win anything,” I quickly retreated back to my paper.

Jareth placed his hand on my shoulder, forcing me to look back at him. “Vestra, you could be queen if you wanted to. I know it. You have a pure devotion to those you care about, which is why you’re entering this circus of a challenge anyway. We could benefit from your participation whether you win or not.”

“I will go as far as I can, Jareth, but I don’t believe I could ever become a queen.” That was the best answer I could give him and the Kindly’s. There were no guarantees. No promises. Just a willingness to try for my family.