Josiah Redburg lived outside of Rhy'din proper his whole life, as all his family before him. He understood the Nexus, the temptation of modernity and the fascination with the ancient, but he and his family much preferred their ways: quietly living in the woodlands, existing without interruption. His great grandfather built a small home in the forests past the city to the West, took a wife; as they had children the home grew into two and then three as his sons and daughters lived there, hunting and fishing and existing without interruption. When Josiah was born and joined their ranks, he was no different.

Josiah was the last of his family. His wife and daughter both died in child labor some twenty years back, and after mourning, he contented himself to a life of solitude with himself and his hunting dogs. For many years he continued to live to his family's unspoken creed, living without need or want or temptation away from Rhy'din City proper. And then something shifted.

It took him several months to realize that he was not the only one using the beaten woodland trails, and weeks longer to realize there was someone building a structure off of one of them. He found a young woman and an older man building a one-room cabin. Still, Josiah never approached. They weren't bothering him and he had the intention of doing the same for them.

Time went on. He would see the woman and the older man, or hear his hunting dogs whining at their far off presence. Josiah guessed that they knew he was here, but there were never any visits or signs of contact on his property. Eventually, the man stopped coming and it was only the woman. One time he caught a proper glimpse of her: a tall, lean thing with a gleaming blade. It was one of the only times he allowed the curiosity to get the better of him, and he came close enough to the cabin to see the deep marks in the nearby trees, the ground stamped down from pounding feet.

Part of him took comfort in his unspeaking, unseen neighbor. Perhaps she too was seeking an existence without interruption; perhaps she would be the next generation. But he was unable to forget the scored trees, and though he was a man of little experience, he could match the marks to a sword. The bile in his gut told him his life would be unsettled, as much as he tried to disregard it.

And so the life of Josiah Redburg went on, him and his hunting dogs, through day's beginning to end, until the solstice of spring approached.

In the dead of night, the first screams came.

I am dreaming again. I find that as Death catches up with my stride, he leaves me offerings like this, once my body is too wracked with pain to leave my brain awake — pieces of my past I am left to relive until the day he takes my hand.

They are painting my skin with henna. It's not a tradition of my father's house, but my mother's, and I honor her request. I am watching my mother and my father's slave girl paint delicate strokes on my throat from the mirror across me; my chest is bare and my skin is prickling from the winter cold. They are painting the story of my life and the hopes for my future on my flesh as a prayer to the gods.

Nothing of what they write will come true.

My mother, now a wispy, gray-haired woman, brings her dye-laden brush down my collarbone toward the curve of my breast. Occasionally, she stops and looks at me with her hard, black eyes as if reading my thoughts and returns to her task with greater concentration. My eyes are the only thing I have inherited from this woman, whom otherwise I would call a stranger. I am my father's daughter.

My father's slave is a mute. He cut out her tongue after she grew heavy with child and blamed him; despite his outright denial of bedding her, he took the child as his second son and continued to give his slave a roof over her silent head. As she fills out the delicate details along my throat, I feel her warm breath on my skin and see the brand on her shoulder that marks her as a slave of House Greene. I have no remorse for what was done to her.

"A fine match," my mother says for the third or fourth time. I've lost count. "You're lucky, Eleanor. Most women are not half as fortunate. A fine match."

I don't reply. I know what she's refering to. In a land where a man's name is his legacy, few will take a barren woman as their wife, at least not without a whore or a slave like my father. I am different. Taine is different.

Taine.

Somewhere above my breast, near my heart, the slave girl has inscribed his name in the old tongue. Taine Firenze, the Lion of Kesina.

I close my eyes and I see him. His skin is tan with summer heat, his hair freshly cut as he prepares for war. His eyes are gray as a coming dawn and filled with heat. His body is heavy with scars, but he holds himself with an unrepentant pride that I fell in love with — that many women fell in love with. But he's mine and I claimed him from the start, from the first day I saw him pick up a sword in his father's courtyard.

I open my eyes and the dream has shifted.

I am standing across form Taine. He is older now, his hair has grown long, and he is dressed in the bloody armor of the High Knight that Dugal made for him. Between us lies the dead Prince Gabrael, and to our left, past the throng of his men — our men — the King lies in a pool of his own blood. There is hurt in Taine's eyes, but more than that, there is loyalty. That loyalty was never to me.

I press forward and my blade pierces the exposed leather just below his left arm. I feel it slice cleanly through and into his chest. He looks at me with the eyes I fell in love with, and the ferocity fades. I have killed him.

The world stops.

She was not there.

She was not there when her husband came to me, wild-eyed and covered in the blood of traitors. They called him a hero that night, but he came to me as a beggar, wanting nothing but his wife back. She was not there when they came for our father, when they stripped him of his rank and divided the spoils of our house among the other noble names. She was not there when I was sent to House Arden as nothing more than a dishonored ward, having lost my title as knight. I prayed to the Gods every night for an answer, and they forgave me for her sins and filled me with the divine.

Now I answer the call of our troubled times under the beckon of the Council to find her and bring her to redemption. They have given me their word: a prisoner if she comes willingly, and example, yes, but spared death. The Gods are good — truly, they are kind.

I know the old man has seen her; I can read it on his heart. He is helping her, but now I must help her. I must save her from the curse she cast on herself.

Come out, little sister. I am here for you. I am waiting.