Chapter One
The day Elara Vanthorne learned the truth about her bloodline began with a nosebleed that would not stop. She had been grinding herbs in the apothecary when the first drop fell onto the marble pestle, and where it landed, the stone cracked clean through with a sound like splitting ice. The blood glowed faintly gold before soaking into the fracture and disappearing entirely.
Master Aldwyn found her twenty minutes later, head tilted back, cloth pressed to her face, surrounded by three ruined pestles and a workbench that had split down its center grain. He did not look surprised. He looked, she realized with a chill that had nothing to do with the draught from the window, like a man who had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.
"It begins," he said, and locked the apothecary door behind him. From beneath his robes he produced a sealed letter bearing a crest she had only ever seen in history books — the twin serpents of House Vanthorne, a dynasty that had ruled the Seven Provinces for three centuries before being wiped from existence in a single, terrible night. "Your mother made me swear to give you this when the blood woke. I had hoped it never would."