Chapter 1

                                                                          ~Six months prior~

To celebrate his third year in office, President Zayn Bandweth has invited all of his secretaries, officers and close friends to a state party. The military have also been invited. It’s going to be a massive party and I mean massive – it’s gonna last six whole months! Because Mordecai is a presidential guard we live only a short while away from the Crystal House and any House news reaches here pretty fast.

Mordecai spends a lot of time away from home working long, unpredictable hours at the President’s service. He works long and hard to be faithful to all that the President demands. I think more than anyone else he understands just how lucky he is to have a job working for President Bandweth. Even though he has to work long, uneventful hours and never knows when he’ll be called on for some emergency or another, his job keeps us safe and he takes it very seriously.

While he’s out I have my studies to do and I keep the house in order because, although we aren’t poor, Mordecai doesn’t like to spend money on unnecessary things.

I can’t complain, though. Most girls don’t get to stay home with their families at my age. At thirteen you get sent off to boarding school. That should have happened to me about about a year ago now but Dad job at the Crystal House pays enough for a private tutor. My tutor, Mickal, is one of the nicest women I’ve known.

Apart from the woman my Mum was.

Mordecai is calling me now, calling me to come and pray together before he leaves for the House.

It’s not safe being a Christian in Susa, even if you do work in the House. And I’m not sure why but somehow I feel something about to happen. Something big. I just wish I knew what.