"She didn’t need to look, because she already knew. They were here. They’d come for her. Come…with her.
Birds.
Grace turned slowly to see that the open sky above had been replaced by spinning columns and twisting rivers, black shapes rising and falling, converging and collapsing above the edge of the Vale. They surrounded it, thousands of small fluttering wings, fading along their length to become translucent beneath the sunlight.
Starlings. A world of them. Hers."
The blood chooses its own. A bond for life, A bond unknown. The House of Tullia is under siege, for the blood carried by its king. Carried too by the queen come before him, and the children born to his line. Now, the Gar have come for all of it. Perhaps, if a young girl should rise into the mystical, dangerous blood of her ancestors, she too will one day become queen. If not, it’s likely that none will live to see the morning.
