Prologue
I didn’t ask for stew. I didn’t ask for any of this really. Not the cold, not the silence, not the kind of life that turns a young girl into something harder.
But the barkeep ladled it anyway, thick and grey and steaming like it might carry warmth where my coat could not. I took the bowl with both hands, fingers calloused from years of fieldwork, and sat in the farthest corner of the unfamiliar tavern, trying not to be anyone.
Outside, Rustden howled. Wind scraped its claws against the shutters. Someone near the hearth sang off-key through a mouthful of ale. The tavern was full of hands and hunger and the kind of laughter that bruises.
But I’d been colder in richer places.
I stirred the stew. Didn’t eat. Let the spoon drift in lazy circles like I was stalling something I hadn’t named yet. My braid was damp from snow melt,clinging to the back of my neck—thick, dark brown, almost black, heavy when wet. I’d inherited it from my mother, along with the height that made me stand out in every room I tried to disappear into. Like this room.
Footsteps scuffed the floorboards nearby, calm yet certain, the sound of someone who already knew where they were going.
I didn’t look up.
“You’re bleeding.”
The voice was low, precise— balanced on the knife‑edge between kindness and cruelty. Known in some grain‑of‑bone way, like a forgotten lullaby played backwards.
I blinked, startled by the sting in my thumb. A gash. A few days old. Reopened. Still red. And there, on the table’s edge, lay a cloth.
Not just any cloth; a scrap of deep indigo sackcloth lay in my hand. Its dusky hue had faded to storm gray, the frayed edge familiar, one corner singed by fire. Whisperpine lingered in the weave, carrying a flood of memories.
It was the same cloth I had used that night. The same cloth I had folded and tucked away, intending to retrieve it later. The same cloth that had been hidden, a secret between me and him and the straw near the wall.
I reached out, my hand trembling as I recognized the deep smear of red, now faded, traced through with the memories of that night.
My blood. My proof. My keepsake, returned to me after all this time, in a place far from home.
I looked up too late. The voice was gone. No face. No silhouette. Just the shifting noise of the tavern swallowing whatever ghost had whispered me back into the world, holding a secret from my past. A secret I thought was lost forever.
“Don’t they know who I am?” I muttered under my breath, more bitterness than volume.
I am the niece of a governor.
A promised bride.
A daughter of Stilbon.
A bastard by blood.
A corpse’s last legacy.
I am a thousand things no one in this room would understand.
I am Vallaria Majalis.
My eyes, green and sharp, caught the firelight and held it. Montnachian eyes, my mother used to say. Eyes that saw too much and gave too little away.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
He didn’t argue. He was no longer there to argue.
Somewhere across the room, a mug shattered. Chairs scraped. Laughter roared louder than it should have.
My gaze drifted to the ones causing it, mercenaries by their posture alone. Restless creatures, built of sharp edges and sleep deprivation. A woman with adagger tucked behind her spine. A man built like a boulder and twice as still. Another whose grin looked like it had once been a blade. And one who watched me too long, like I was a poem he meant to decode or dismantle.
I should have looked away.
I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Because, somewhere beneath my ribs, where frost lived beside longing, I recognized them. All fire. Different flames.
I dipped the spoon once more and sipped. The stew was bitter. The hunger in me was worse.
I would leave in the morning. Or I wouldn’t.
Either way, he was still out there. The one with the voice like thunder held too long in the chest.
And I hadn’t bled him yet.
Not enough. Not nearly enough.
I was just getting started.
