[ONGOING: New Chapters Every Sunday]
Kingsblade. Rise of the Raven Queen.
Her kingdom is in ashes.
She's supposed to save it, but there's one problem.
She doesn't remember she's the queen.
She doesn't remember anything at all.
With war looming on...
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As the crowd dispersed, no one noticed the stranger in their midst fade back into the late afternoon shadows that clung like cobwebs to cellar doorframes. She wore a visceral mask of inky darkness that hid all but her icy blue eyes cast by the deep cowl of her mottled, thatch-and-clay colored cloak.
Careful now, she thought to her feet.
Don't make a sound.
Slow, steady, confident--she wove through the border streets like a tailor's needle guiding a thread over a hem.
She made no sound as she moved through the labyrinth of passageways between the inn and the alehouse, the smithy and the palm-reader. She haunted the edge of the nomad's camp, listening to the happy sound of tinkling laughter and words that sounded like wind chimes. The native language of Thrab was wistful and warm.
A pang of longing shot through the woman who wore the mask as she remembered aged hands holding hers as her adoptive mother offered her more chai tea.
Her training in the Thrab had been hard, but it had been home, too.
She blinked away tears as she continued past the village of tents and tapestries and into the open desert.
She moved through the ruined city like it was her own village's common green, as if she knew every dip and rise of the earth and every shattered yard ornament like the back of her hand. She knew the stories, brushed her hands across the top of the youngest sapling, noted the broken ground beneath it, and prayed that the one who left the seed behind was safe.
Alive.
Home.
Soon, the destruction was just a footnote on the horizon, and her shoulders relaxed. She allowed herself to take a deep breath, feeling the tension in her chest stretch and then fade away.
Sand poured over the toes of her old, deer-skin boots as she dug one heel and then the other as she climbed up another sand dune.
"I pity the soul born in the company of dunes and sand instead of trees and mountains," she said to no one in particular.
To say it had been a long day would be an understatement. The stars stretched overhead like a distant mist. She wondered if it was the heat of the day that made her think of them as raindrops or even snow held in the Maker's hand and waiting to fall.
Seven, she had counted when she entered the city and watched the sunrise.
Seven she counted now as she crested over the top of the one beneath her feet.
"Thank Elindir," she heaved.
Her horse, a bay mare, stamped her hooves and shook her pale, straw-colored mane.
"You're late," she declared indignantly.
"Should've named you Impatience," the woman scolded from the top of the dune before leaning back and throwing herself forward to slide her way, ankle deep, to the bottom. "You're going to be sad you didn't sleep more while you could."
