A Tale of Storm and Ash

She had survived dragons, kings, and the quiet cruelty of time. She had walked out of fire carrying grief like a second shadow, and for years the world had known her only as a ghost moving between forests and forgotten roads. Mountains remembered her footsteps. Rivers carried the sound of her silence. In hidden chasms far beneath the earth, the stones still whispered her true name. But peace, she would learn, was not the same as stillness. The world was changing again. Old powers stirred in the East. Shadows stretched longer beneath ancient trees. Kings grew restless, and even the smallest hands would soon be asked to carry impossible things. She had spent a lifetime running from crowns, from loss, from the unbearable weight of loving and surviving. Yet fate is patient, and some roads lead not away, but back. Back to old friendships. Back to unfinished grief. Back to a prince with autumn in his eyes and questions she had never dared answer. For the age of dragons had ended, but the age of men was only beginning. And when darkness rose once more, the stones would sing again.

~

Sequel to A Ballad of Starlight and Dragonfire