How did it come to this?
Loyal to her family, her lands and her people, Théadain, the illegitimate daughter of Théoden, King of Rohan, has little concern for the world that lies beyond her familiar grasslands. When all that she loves is threatened...
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Prologue
A soft breath of wind stirred the air of the darkened bedchamber, lifting the light, silken curtains that draped by the open window so they danced across the beams of moonlight that illuminated the room. Across the floor, just out of reach of the grey shadows cast by the swaying drapery, the last embers of a fire smouldered in the marble hearth. It had been lit in the early hours of the evening, more for the atmosphere and comfort than any heat. The weather beyond the stone walls had been warm for several weeks as the summer had worn on; there was little need to spend nights huddled by a fire.
Still, it had been lit, and now as it died in the early hours of the morning the logs that had long since burnt down to cinders crumbled from where they had been banked against one another, sending a small cloud of sparks and ash up towards the chimney as they tumbled.
It was this sound that woke the young woman from her fitful sleep in the bed set against the wall opposite the hearth – a startled gasp leaving her lips as she bolted upright, her hands grasping at the bedsheets, almost as if they expected to find the hilt of a sword there.
Slowly, as her wide eyes adjusted to the silver light of the moonlit room, she allowed her fingers to unclench from where they gripped the fabric, drawing in several long, slow breaths to steady herself in the wake of her nightmare. The chaotic screams and clamour of battle that had filled her head drifted away like smoke as she looked around the familiar walls of her chamber, one hand reaching to rub across the back of her neck, where strands of her copper curls clung to her sweat-slicked skin. The images fled, yet the lingering sense of dread and grief still clung to her rapidly beating heart, even as it slowed with her breaths. Unconsciously, her other hand slid across to the empty space in the bed bedside her, a small frown creasing her brow as she felt that beyond the heat conjured by her own body the bed was cold.
Sighing softly, she soothed her hands over the mussed sheets before slipping from the bed, letting her bare feet press to the cool marble floor as she pulled her velvet robe of deep blue over her nightgown. For a moment, she pressed her hand to her left side, just above her hip as the uncomfortable twinge of movement after laying down for several hours settled. It grew fainter by the day, the pain that lingered beneath the angry scar on her side, though she feared it would be some time before that pain ceased to visit her in her memories and dreams. Her mind still echoed with those dreams that had refused to let her rest, and she knew sleep would not come to her again that night without the one presence that could soothe her racing thoughts.
Padding softly across the bedchamber, she set her sights upon where the moonlight spilled into the room from the open balcony, making the curtains that swayed gently on either side of the opening look as though they had been spun of starlight. It was a peaceful image; one she drank in gratefully as she paused by one of the stone pillars to take in the sight before her. It was not the open plains that stretched beyond the balcony, nor the silhouetted mountains on the Eastern horizon that drew her eye, not even the river that glimmered like a ribbon of mithril as it crossed the moonlit landscape. Nor even the stars that danced overhead, uninterrupted by cloud or shadow on this clear night.
