Chapter 1 before the whispers
*Chapter 1: Before the Whispers*
The hearth crackled, and the smell of oat bread and stew clung to the rafters like it had every night for as long as I could remember.
“Stop laughing like that, you’ll choke!”
My younger brother, Tomas, threw a crust of bread at me across the table. It hit my cheek and fell into my lap.
I wiped it off and threw it back harder. “You started it!”
My mother rolled her eyes but she was smiling. “Both of you, behave. We have a guest, and she’s supposed to be an elite knight of the palace, not a barn cat.”
That got the whole table laughing. My father, wiping stew from his beard, raised his mug. “To my daughter. Still the same fool she was before the king decided she was worth armor.”
I raised mine back, 24 and stupid enough to think this was normal. Warm bread, my family arguing over the last piece of smoked fish, the sound of rain starting up outside. We weren’t rich. The roof leaked in the spring, and my boots had a patch on them. But we weren’t poor. We ate every night, and no one went to bed cold.
For now, I was just Elara of Millbrook. Not “Knight-Captain Elara” that the palace scribes wrote down. Not the girl who could hold a blade better than most men twice her age.
Just me.
“Another month and you’ll be back at the palace,” Tomas said, nudging my foot under the table. “Boring without you. Who am I supposed to lose at dice to?”
“Find someone else to cheat,” I said, and laughed.
I didn’t know it would be the last time I heard that sound from this room.
I didn’t know that in a month, I’d be in the wrong place when the whispers found me.
That the next time I sat at this table, it would be in my head, and I wouldn’t be alone.
But tonight, the hearth was warm.
Tonight, I was just home.
