She was wandering around the twisty bend of a game trail, humming a little half-remembered song to herself, when she came upon a scene out of a tapestry: A deer. A doe, she knew, not just from its lack of antlers but also the shape of its face and the size of its flanks. Beautiful and large and s...
But Brian was a man of his word, and even though she paused often to scent the wind and listen for his footsteps, she found no trace of him. At one point she ran back and trailed him to see if her senses were correct, and they were: he had wandered back over the bridge. He’d stopped halfway acros...
Their son, by some twist of fate, was spared. As were all of the children in the castle. Some called it a miracle. A year passed. The fever ran itself out, though not before taking a staggering percentage of the townspeople with it. The time of mourning finally ended and a coronation date was set...