Starsinger

Prologue

It was a bad night.

The wind was biting cold as it whistled through the barren tower chamber, tugging at her gown. Tatiana pulled the thick velvet robe tighter around her shoulders. Above her, the sky was black and clouded. A starless night, she thought grimly. Passing clouds took bites out of the moon. Tatiana shivered, an unsettling cold biting deep into mind and bone.

The candle on the table beside her had burned out. Wax pooled around the copper setting, still warm to the touch. The hour had been late when she'd made the climb to the top of the tower—by now it was the dead of night. The tower was ancient, a remnant of the old palace. When the wind rose, the air would swirl inside it like a cyclone. When the wind was low, it would moan against the rough-hewn walls like a ghost in the night. In the courtyard below only the kyrsquads' stealth teams still practiced, their near-silent combat a constant reminder of the cloud of war hanging heavy over the realm. Only Tatiana ever came to this tower, on the nights when she could not sleep.

Like tonight. The vivid clarity of her nightmare was already ebbing away, but she could still feel the darkness like a bitter taste in the back of her throat. A murmuring tension. The shadows were moving again. Tatiana clenched her fists. She needed guidance, but the Song was too faint for her to hear. It had always been that way.

A flash of steel drew her eye to the courtyard below. Apart from the rest, a slight woman twisted and spun, a pair of knives whirling around her in a complicated pattern dance. Tatiana watched intently as the knives picked up speed, glinting furiously in the night.

I am running out of time. She did not need the Song to know that. The Cycle was beginning and Raelyn was not ready. What more does the girl need? Now the king's mounting suspicions were making Tatiana's preparations even more difficult.

She felt a sudden pang. Once she had valued the king's trust, and it pained her to lose it. We all must make sacrifices.

The moon lost its battle and was swallowed up by a dark cloud. Tatiana held her hand in front of her face but could not make out the shape of her own fingers. A buzzing pressure washed over her like a wave, stealing her breath.

Magic. A spell cresting and coming loose. Fear gripped her. No, not yet—

A shuddering crack split the air, and yet made no sound. Tatiana gasped as it ripped through her chest. She groped for the table to keep from falling as the stealth squads fought on below her, unaware. She knew without seeing that the barriers around the palace were breaking, could feel the fissures rupturing up the sides of the rubalite anchors, light draining from the crystal spears. We are exposed.

In the courtyard, the woman with the knives dropped like a stone.