Heart of the Wild #3

The square was meant to be the end of her.

Elayne Aetheron left Elandor on a creature she first saw as a girl, through a gate the forest tore open to reach her, with the sound of a city still screaming at her back. She does not believe her life was worth that much blood. The trees, it seems, do.

Eldrath does not give maps to princesses. It gives dark, and distance, and things that watch from the branches as if they have been waiting for her name. Somewhere in that green is the compact her father died to keep. Somewhere in it is the dragon she threw at the sky rather than let her uncle kill. Somewhere in it is the reason the wild decided she was worth a war.

Emrys will hunt her.
The forest will not make that easy.

To survive what claimed her, Elayne will have to go where no crown is meant to walk - into the heart of the wild - and learn what the stories left out when they taught children that only beasts live beyond the wall.

She promised a dying morning that she would watch him fall.
First she has to live long enough to keep it.