Read here from the first part of Winds and Whispers:

The meal began in silence, broken only by the careful clink of utensils and the sound of wine poured into crystal. The King’s appetite was legendary, but tonight he merely toyed with his food, eyes flicking from plate to council and back. It was clear from the set of his jaw that something was expected—of them, or of the night itself.

It was Lady Marlowe who spoke first, her piercing voice slicing the silence as neatly as her knife did the duck breast. Duke Blackwood flinched, disliking her voice as much as the person as a whole. Alina was sympathetic; her voice did sound like an ill-tuned violin. Dying goats came to mind. “There’s news from the southern fiefdoms. Two spice caravans have gone missing—no ransom, no witnesses, just vanished.”

Duke Blackwood grunted, mouth already full. “Bandits. Or smugglers. The southern border’s always been a sieve.”

Lord Ashford dabbed at his mouth, then set his napkin with surgical precision. “If it were mere banditry, we’d have bodies. Or bribes. I suspect a coordinated effort. Perhaps someone testing our response time.”

Queen Isabella lifted her glass, voice sweet as honey. “What do you advise, Lord Rowan?”

Alina watched as Rowan weighed his words. He was careful, always, and never more so than in the King’s presence. “The council might consider dispatching a small, elite retinue. Publicly, to reassure the trade guilds, but with discreet orders to investigate beyond the border. The loss of spice is less important than the precedent of unsolved crime.”

Lord Windmere spoke for the first time, his voice rough as old parchment. “Agreed. But if the rumors are true and there are rebels involved, then a show of force may only provoke escalation.” He fingered his sparse hair as if to check that it was still there, an unconscious nervous gesture.

Rebels? What rebels? Alina had never heard of rebels in their realm before.

King Edmund’s fingers drummed the table once, then lay flat. “Our coffers will not suffer the insult of desert lords lifting our goods without consequence. We’ll send both the envoy and the escort. Lady Marlowe, draft the orders. Rowan, select the retinue.”

Marlowe bowed her head, hair never shifting from its impossible perch. “At once, Your Majesty.”

As the council’s conversation moved to the next crisis—the tax dispute in the eastern valleys—Alina found her attention wandering. She knew she was meant to take notes, to learn from the sparring of these titans, but every word tasted the same: metallic, sharp-edged, and bitter. She found herself counting the panes in the windows, the knots in the wainscoting, the number of times Chancellor Fairchild adjusted her cufflinks.

When the King addressed her directly, she nearly missed it. “Alina,” he said, voice deceptively warm, “what would you do about the grain shortage in the north?”

She blinked. Another test. Of course. All eyes turned, hungry for error. “I–I would request an audit of the grain reserves and send an impartial observer to oversee distribution. If the shortage is truly due to blight, we might divert supplies from the western surplus, but only after ensuring the reports are accurate.”

Fairchild smiled, sharklike. “You suspect the local barons are hoarding?” Her long nose twitched in anticipation.

Alina’s throat was suddenly dry. “I suspect…that people will do what they believe they must, when faced with scarcity. It is prudent to verify.”

There was a brief, electric silence. Then the King nodded, a ghost of approval in the gesture. “Well reasoned.”

Relief flooded her, but in the same instant a flicker of lightning illuminated the windows, painting the table in blue-white relief. A rumble followed, soft at first, then growing to a vibration felt in the feet. The glassware trembled.

A glance out the window showed a storm gathering. Black clouds were rolling in with enormous speed, dramatic creations of white, grey, and blue, with obsidian coating their undersides. Where had that come from so quickly?

The council looked at the King, but Edmund seemed unruffled. “The storm is early this year,” he said. He turned to the Queen: “Maybe you could ask the Alchemist to see if there is unstable weather ahead of us, my dear. I would not want the Solstice Celebration to be drowned in rain.”

“Of course, my Lord. I will see to it tomorrow.”

Alina watched as a servant, his hands shaking, nearly dropped a decanter. He continued to cast nervous glances at the windows and then at the doors as if calculating his emergency exit. Superstitions ran deep within the common people, and many thought winter storms to be a bad omen. She saw Lord Windmere’s gaze also lingered on the window, eyes narrowed to pinpricks. Again, he touched his hair with flitting fingers. Was he superstitious, too?

Dinner continued, but the mood was fractured now. Conversation skittered, never settling. A second flash, brighter and closer, sent shadows leaping along the marble. The thunder that followed instantly made the dinner party jump in their seats. The wind, at least two stories up, made the casements moan.

Alina tried to concentrate on her food, but the knot in her stomach had only tightened. She realized then that her hands were drumming a nervous pattern on the linen, and stilled them, folding them tightly in her lap.

Queen Isabella reached over, fingers cool and dry on Alina’s wrist. “You’re shivering,” she murmured.

“I’m fine,” Alina whispered back, though she wasn’t sure if she was. There was a weight pressing down on the room, some expectation or warning just out of reach. Was it just her or did the others feel it, too?

A third peal of thunder, this time so close it rattled the chandeliers. The King’s voice cut through: “Enough. Rowan, dismiss the servants. Lady Marlowe, see to the council’s security. I want no one in or out until the storm passes.”

The order was absolute. The servants filed out with barely a sound, relieved and anxious in turn. Marlowe signaled to Blackwood and Fairchild; the three rose as one, moving to the side chamber with visible haste. Blackwood almost took the table linen with him as he struggled to heave his considerable belly up and away.

Only the royal family and Rowan remained at the table, the storm beating against the windows. For the first time that Alina could remember, the King’s usually unshakeable confidence seemed thinner, stretched to transparency.

Alina looked from her father to her mother, and then to Rowan, whose face was unreadable.

The silence was worse than the noise.

It was the Queen who finally broke it. “Do you think it’s them?” she asked, so softly Alina almost missed it.

Alina’s head swiveled to her mother. “Who?”

Rowan’s jaw flexed. “If you mean the rebels, no. I doubt they have the means to conjure storms. I wouldn’t be too worried, Your Majesty.”

“What rebels?” Alina insisted, but was ignored again. What in the name of the Gods was going on here?

The King’s fingers resumed their drumming, but slower, each beat measured and ominous. “We will not give in to superstition,” he said. “This is the Realm. We are its rulers.”

Lightning split the sky again, so bright it burned afterimages onto Alina’s retinas, the following thunder rattling the whole palace. She looked from one person to the next and for the first time, she saw her family not as rulers, but as people—tired, uncertain, vulnerable people. The thought made her feel strangely braver.

The silence returned, heavy as wet velvet, and outside the wind howled like a beast denied.

***

Queen Isabella’s hand, so poised and steady only moments ago, found Alina’s beneath the table. The pressure was gentle, but the tremor in the Queen’s fingers told a different story.

“Stay close,” her mother whispered, the command barely louder than a breath. For a heartbeat, Alina reveled in the expression of motherly care. But the moment broke as thunder rolled overhead, shaking the room and sending a shiver up her arm.

The darkness pressed at the windows, thicker than any night she remembered. Clouds rolled like bruised silk over the city, blotting out the last traces of sunset. The candlelight, once warm and flattering, now painted every face with uneasy shadows. The blue fire of the chandeliers flickered, making the gilded walls seem to pulse.

Alina had still not been given an answer. Nerves strung, her irritation flared. “Mother, will you not—” she started, only for another tremor, sharper this time, to cut her off, rattling the glassware and making the cutlery jump. The tablecloth fluttered as if lifted by an unseen wind. This time even Lord Rowan, ever the statue, betrayed himself in the way he pinched the bridge of his nose, a fleeting gesture of disbelief.

Alina’s heart hammered. The palace was supposed to be impervious. She tried to recall if she’d ever heard of the walls shaking like this, but could not come up with even one memory that came close to this.

She pulled her hand away from her mother’s, the move sharper than she intended. “I want to see,” she said. It was not quite defiance, but not obedience either.

“Alina—” Isabella began, reaching to hold her, but Alina was already out of her chair. “Alina, stop!” the King commanded.

Alina was drawn to the balcony inexplicably by a force she could not resist. She crossed the room in four quick steps, her father standing up, his chair toppling over. “Alina!”

But she did not stop. With everybody’s gaze following, she unlatched the great glass doors to the balcony. Her mother’s plea—”Wait!”—was lost in the shriek of the wind.

The air outside struck her with physical force. Her hair whipped across her eyes, and her dress pressed itself against her legs as if it too were trying to cling to safety. She braced herself against the cold stone balustrade and looked out over the palace grounds.

Two guards came onto the balcony, ordered by the King to take her inside. In that moment lightning, cruel and precise, split the darkness. The world below was transformed: the ornamental lawns now a froth of shadows and silver, the gravel walks turned to rivers by the rain. In that frozen instant, Alina saw movement where there should have been none: shapes darting between the hedgerows, bending the unnatural light.

She blinked, thinking she’d imagined it. But the next flash confirmed it, highlighting figures, moving far too fast for any sane explanation. Their uniforms were wrong for palace guards, and their limbs moved with an animal grace. They ran low to the ground, skidding on wet flagstones, vanishing and reappearing behind statues and fountains.

The guards hasted back into the room to report what they had seen, their orders to protect the princess forgotten. Alina pressed closer to the balustrade, heedless of the rain. At her throat, the amulet warmed, a slow pulse against her skin. The sensation was new; the crystal, in contrast to the chain that warmed to her skin, usually lay cold, nothing more than a decorative weight. She touched it, feeling a faint vibration—a warning, or perhaps a summons.

Another flash, so bright it forced her to squint. The figures were closer now, halfway across the lower courtyard. One man, taller than the others, paused at the foot of the steps leading to the east wing. He looked up. For a moment, Alina was certain he saw her. The face was hidden in the storm’s glare, but she could not shake the feeling that this man was looking right at her.

Her breath fogged in the freezing air. She should have turned back, locked the doors, run to her parents. But she stood transfixed, eyes locked on the advancing shadows.

The guards at the gate finally stirred, raising the alarm. Their shouts were instantly swallowed by the storm, but the glint of swords caught the lightning. They formed a line, bracing for what they must have thought was a handful of trespassers.

The next sequence happened in stuttering fragments: a flash of movement, the clash of metal, the guards thrown aside like dolls. A figure swept through the line, and men dropped in its wake. There was no blood, at least not at first—just collapse, silence, and the invaders slipping through the breach as easily as water through a broken dam.

Alina’s knees buckled. She grabbed the stone rail with both hands, the cold leeching through her gloves. The amulet burned now, as if feeding on her panic.

Behind her, glass shattered. She spun to see her mother and Lord Rowan forcing the doors open against the gale. “Alina!” the Queen screamed, her composure gone. Rain lashed across the carpet, and candle flames guttered and died.

Alina stumbled backward, all but falling into her mother’s arms. The Queen gripped on her shoulders, desperate and wild.

“What did you see?” Isabella demanded.

Alina tried to answer, but her teeth chattered so hard she could barely speak. “They’re—inside,” she managed.

Lord Rowan slammed the doors, then drew the curtains with a violence that ripped the velvet. “We need to move,” he said. “Your Majesty, we should—”

A sound interrupted him, low and inhuman, echoing from the halls beyond.

The dining room had no more protection than any other part of the palace. Whatever was coming, it was already too late.

Queen Isabella turned Alina toward her, both hands on her face. “Whatever happens, do not let go of the amulet. Do you understand?”

Alina nodded, mute.

“Good.” The Queen kissed her forehead—another rare gesture. She must have been beside herself. “We will get through this. Together.”

Outside, the storm showed no sign of ending, and the darkness pressed ever closer.

The far doors exploded inward with a sound like thunder, and the world shattered. Three figures entered and then several things happened at the same time. As the figures strode in, their gaits almost measured, the King leapt to the far wall to grab a ceremonial sword hanging there. He whirled around, swinging the weapon with practiced grace and enormous power. Decades of training took over. He moved as if the steel were an extension of his body. Lord Rowan drew a dagger and adopted a protective stance. The guards formed a wall before the Queen and Alina, weapons drawn, the captain shouting orders. The intruders moved into the room, wholly unimpressed. They were masked but Alina could now see that it was a man—a rather burly sort with massive hands—and, surprisingly, two women: one with flaming red mane, carrying a bow and quiver, one with a sheet of silver hair, moving so gracefully she seemed to almost float above the ground.

They came to a halt and for a moment, nobody said anything. Then Lord Rowan’s voice filled the room: “Stop this at once! You must know that you cannot succeed! What do you want?”

No answer came.

“Guards, take them!”

At the first move of the guards, the intruders reacted, and the room erupted in chaos. Guards charged and were picked up by an invisible wind that smashed them into the walls. More guards flooded in from the corridor. Weapons clashed, flashes of light flared up, men grunted, furniture crashed, fighters thumped to the floor—mayhem took control. Guards fell left, right and center. Alina’s thoughts flew scattered through her head, trying to take it all in, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, trying to understand, what her parents had said before about rebels…what rebels? Why? And what did her parents know about them? Why didn’t she know anything? Alina was very much afraid of these people, with their violence, their ragged clothes, their strange abilities and their masks. Her nervous system was on full alert, heart drumming in her ears, sweat breaking out all over her body and no ability at all to decide, what to do and how to act. She was totally frozen. Later, she would remember having grotesque thoughts like how the sound of a fist smashing a face sounded completely different than how she would have expected; how unnatural her father’s eyes looked with his pupils widened to the maximum by the adrenaline that flooded through him and how her eyes must look the same; how the chandeliers’ refracted light added some kind of surrealistic glimmer to the whole scene.

But amid all crazy and random thoughts, one thing became very clear: they did not have a chance.

***

Another man entered the room.

He strolled in, almost leisurely. His presence seemed to fill the entire room, as he crossed the space. Alina found herself transfixed. The way he moved was so…graceful, really. Somehow it was clear immediately that he was in command, maybe because of his posture, maybe because of the way the other intruders looked at him. He was tall, dark-haired and handsome, as Aline noted with some bewilderment. How could she pay attention to something so irrelevant in such a situation? As she watched him approach over the shoulders of the guards before her, she noted a thin, silvery scar along his jaw—and his eyes.

They were gold. Not the gold of rings or coins, but something living—amber caught in sunlight, sharp and almost impossible to look at. They scanned the room in a single sweep, taking in the carnage, the positions of every player, the trembling arc of the chandeliers, the exact placement of her and her mother behind Rowan’s shield. And when his gaze landed on Alina, the air in her lungs stopped.

There was a moment, barely longer than a heartbeat, hardly shorter than a breath, when she could feel the line drawn between them, as real as the edge of a blade. The world shrank to a single point: the amber of his eyes, and the message written there. Recognition, and something more. Not affection. Not malice. Possession, maybe, or fate.

She could not look away.

The man’s face flicked, not really a smile, but something close to it, as if acknowledging a secret only they shared. He strode forward, untouched by the melee, and in his wake the very air seemed to bend. The guards who barred his path hesitated, uncertain; one tried to raise a pike and found it knocked aside with a flick of his wrist, the wood splintering as if struck by a hammer. Another guard lunged, blade flashing, and the intruder moved so fast that for a second Alina wondered if she had imagined it. The guard fell, unmarked but unconscious.

Queen Isabella shrieked: “Alina! Run!”

But Alina could not move. She was anchored, every muscle locked in place. The closer the came, the more her mind rebelled against her body’s paralysis. Who was he? How was he here? Why was she—?

Her only answer was the pulse in her throat, frantic and deafening.

King Edmund saw him next, and the transformation was immediate. The King’s face, always so disciplined, collapsed into something raw and shocked. “You,” he hissed, the word more curse than greeting. “You’re supposed to be—”

“Supposed to be what?” The man smiled mildly, a sight utterly at odds with the carnage. “Dead?”

He moved again, this time directly toward the King. The other rebels fell back, forming a perimeter; the guards—or at least, what was left of them—scrambled to reinforce their monarch. Edmund met the black-clothed figure head-on, his sword singing through the air. Their blades clashed once, twice, sparks flying, but on the third pass he caught the King’s wrist in an iron grip.

“Enough,” he said, voice low.

The King tried to twist free. “You have no right—”

The attacker’s other hand closed over Edmund’s and pried the sword away with humiliating ease. He spun the King in a half-circle and sent him sprawling into the wall, then tossed the ceremonial sword across the room. It clattered at Alina’s feet.

In the silence that followed, Alina could not look away from her mother’s drawn face, more terrified than she had ever seen her before. Queen Isabella reached for her, nails biting into her arm. “Please, Alina,” she whispered. “You must run.”

Lord Rowan stepped forward, placing himself bodily between the women and the intruder. He was still holding his dagger, pointing it to the man. “You will not touch them, Kael Stormborne,” Rowan said, his face a mask of rage and disgust.

Kael tilted his head. “I have no quarrel with you, Ashford. Step aside.”

Rowan did not move. “Never.”

For a split second, the two men faced off. In that instant, Alina thought she saw something—respect, or regret, even—pass between them.

Kael sighed. “As you wish.”

Then he was a blur. Rowan’s dagger flashed, but Kael caught his arm and twisted, using Rowan’s own momentum to send him skidding across the marble. Rowan rolled until he came up on one knee, dagger ready. Kael ignored him.

He walked straight to Alina.

For a moment, nothing happened. He stood just a pace away, golden eyes burning into hers. The sound of the battle faded. Alina realized, with a distant part of her brain, that she was trembling—not with fear, exactly, but with something harder to name.

Kael reached out, slow and deliberate, and took her hand.

At the first touch, a jolt ran up her arm, a spark of sensation so sharp she gasped aloud. Her entire body went rigid, every nerve lighting up in sequence. The amulet at her throat pulsed, the crystal blazing hot against her skin. She had expected a hard grip, but he held her hand gently. She fleetingly marveled at how it was possible to fight in one second and hold back your power in the next.

Kael’s gaze flicked to the amulet, then back to her face. He smiled, this time without irony.

“Hello, Princess,” he said.

He knows who she is.

But Alina has no idea who she has met.

And this is only the beginning...

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