Kitra had lived the majority of her life amongst the bedrock and sand of the Deserts, beside her siblings and beneath the lofty shadows of her parents. Her adolescence was a pulse of pure happiness, there were no monsters lurking in the memories of her childhood – she had been loved and privileged here with her dragon father and magician mother. The only tragedy to speak of was that of Vanquish’s death and that came at the tail-end of her first maturity cycle, but that had been enough. Enough to send the gold slathered girl reeling away with the Deserts well in her shadow.
Kitra had left seeking the same decadence of emotion that had been afforded to her as a child, her body ached and her heart craved the affections of other souls like a sweet tooth. What had once been a bratty greediness had burrowed down deeper inside her, down to dip into a deep well of covetousness. Kitra had found a place where inhibitions were unwelcome and there were many more than pleased to fill her emptiness. Seven years her father’s bones lay at the beach and seven years did she live amongst the shameless – but her only wickedness lay in the freeness of her lust. And although she has never bore a child she had known lusts so slick and sweet her very veins quivered. She wonders if the mare that stood upon the dune, stomach swollen and eyes void, had ever felt the same.
The sleek black mare makes her way up the spine of the dune, her delicate features twisting as the scent of death swims in her nostrils. The smell is faint on the mare’s skin but the Deserts’ heat boils it into the air and Kitra’s ears are flicked back against her skull as she comes within a shadow’s length, “you smell like shit,” the princess says, “what’s your name?”