For every so often, Ezer swore the windchanged.
Every so often, it went from a whistle to a whisper.
And she swore she heard it calling her name.
She supposed it should have frightened her, that the wind had a voice. But it had never done anything to bring her harm, and each time, the sound faded as soon as she thought she heard it.
But it always caused her to turn her eyes north. To stare out the window of her tower and wonder if there wasmorefor her outside Rendegard.
A story still waiting beyond the shimmering black sea.
She felt safe with the birds perched all around her. They would warn her, should anything strange arrive.
Her eyes began to droop, heavy from the day’s work.
But on the other side, the nightmares came.
She saw herself hunted by shadow wolves.
She saw herself die, her throat ripped out by a war eagle with eyes like molten fire.
In these dreams, she often found herself adorned in a black cloak, riding on the wrong side of the war. Bowing to the Acolyte instead of the five gods.
Sometimes, perhaps the most peculiar nightmare of all, she stood at the warfront in the Expanse, a land of snow and ice … and it was there that she found herself accompanied by a faceless man, his hood full of shadows.
‘Ezer,’he breathed as he ran his calloused fingertips across the scars on her face. ‘Come back to me.’
She’d just drifted off to sleep when a caw shook her awake.
As if the raven had heard, seconds before her, the sound of footsteps that now approached from beyond the Aviary door.
The prison master, here to collect the messages, Ezer thought … but the gait was much heavier than his.
Her heartbeat hastened.
No one ever visited her tower beyond the servants who delivered plates of stale meals, and certainly not at this hour.
The raven lifted its wings and soared to a high perch, its absence leaving Ezer cold.
‘Traitor,’ she hissed.
She stood from her cot, chains clinking between her ankles as a pair of skeleton keys rattled outside. The lock twisted, and the heavy black hinges screamed as the door swung open.
A warrior from the north stood on the other side.
A Sacred Knight, with hair as pale as snow.
2
‘Ithink you have the wrong door,’ Ezer said now, heart pounding. She curled her sweaty hands into fists.
A Sacred Knight.
Standingherein the south, when he should have been at the front lines of war, fighting back against the Acolyte’s darkness with his gods-given magic.
The man who stood in her doorway was most certainly a warrior.
He was her opposite, in every way.
