Prologue: The Garden of Games
Long before he was Sir John of the Silver Blade, before anyone ever called him brave, he was just a boy with messy hair and a wooden sword, running through a garden he had no right to be in.
He had slipped past the guards at the edge of the woods, daring himself to explore the “forbidden grounds” his father had warned him about. The place wasn’t nearly as terrifying as he imagined—just filled with marble statues, sweet-smelling roses, and one very loud girl who hit harder than she looked.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” the girl said, standing with hands on her hips, her dress muddied at the hem and her braid undone.
“I could say the same to you,” John replied, raising his wooden sword in challenge.
She smirked. “Do you know how to fence?”
“Do you?”
That was how it began: a duel in the garden, two kids spinning and laughing beneath a sky painted gold with sunset. They played until the guards found him, until his father came storming into the courtyard in full armor, apologizing profusely.
It was only then that John realized the girl with the bright eyes and dirty knees wasn’t a servant’s daughter like he’d thought.
She was the princess. Her name was Elira.
From that day on, everything changed. He saw her less and less, until eventually not at all. His training as a knight demanded focus, discipline, distance from the distractions of boyhood.
But he never forgot her.
And when the summons came—years later, bearing the royal seal of Tapiskma—it wasn’t the thought of gold or honor that made John saddle his horse that morning.
It was her.
