THE Wedding Night started out as big as every Illeá Royal wedding had. Hundreds of people had come to see the new King Rory and Queen Elise, excitedly wanting to hear their promises of what they would bring to the country of Illeá.

QUEEN Elise had sat everyone down, already able to demand silence out of an entire room of hundreds. She spoke loudly and passionately about that night being the end of their fighting with the rebels and that her and her new husband had been planning a peace between them for that night for a long time. Everyone had listen anxiously, curious to hear how it would happen, but Elise and Rory said nothing about a how.

AFTER the guests had left, leaving Elise and Rory to enjoy their wedding night, they gathered over twenty rebels, every maid and guard they could find, and all of the residents in the palace to witness the peace making between them and the rebels in the ballroom where the newly wedded husband and wife had shared their first dance together.

NO one showed for the first hour, though. Elise was worrying at her nails, afraid she had promised her new country something she couldn't offer. But along came a strong gust of wind and an elegant woman, dressed in all black and with vibrant, yellow eyes. She looked Rory and Elise up and down before laughing.

THE laugh had echoed through the entire room and shattered every window. It was evident that this was not who Rory and Elise had intended to meet. Though, the two had planned to meet a witch, it wasn't supposed to have been this one in particular.

THE witch dressed in all black stopped laughing and informed them that she had killed the one they had planned to meet, along with every guard who had been stationed at their posts. She even had remnants of their attire to prove it. She claimed to be from the Southern side of the rebels, sent to make sure the peace treaty went through as they intended for it to.

ELISE and Rory succumbed to her terms after lists and lists of threats. The agreed to allow a curse to come into their family that would force them to stay in place, under the Rebels' control more or less. They would lead fairly and the curse would make sure they never stepped out of place.

AND so they began to set the curse in place, the entire room windy and fires starting with the witch's chanting. Rory and Elise clung onto each other, Elise's eyes full of unshed tears, but she forced herself to stay string during the entire thing. Even as it was interrupted, the witch being thrown across the room, she stood strong at her husband's side.

THEIR view had been blocked from the witch and whoever had come to stop her, but the pair got a sense that it couldn't be good. The palace residents who had come to watch the peace had run away from the chaos, but were slaughtered the second they thought they had gotten away.

WITHIN ten seconds, their entire future had changed, and the curse was set in stone, only harsher and stronger than they had ever intended for it to be.

THE curse would be passed along through their entire family line. Each one of them taking on a trait that the rebels had despised from previous rulers. It would place restraints on Rory's desires for revenge and Elise's glory, along with restraints on their soon to be born children. Kason would be cursed with restraints on his romantic life, Elijah's would be honesty and their little sister's would in the end by tiredness.

WHAT they would learn is that it not only cursed them, but the entire palace itself. Everyone who died that night would be forced to haunt the palace. The ballroom would never be able to be used again and their entire family's bloodline would tarnished. Elise would never be able to forgive herself and Rory would find himself never being able to forgive her, either.

THOUGH the rebels would never bother them again and everyone outside of the palace would forever be kept safe, it may not have been worth everything else that came to be in The Dark Palace of Illeá.