Rowan found me after breakfast.
I was standing in the corridor outside my room looking at the wall. That sounds strange but there was something on the wall worth looking at. A large painting, old, the colours deepened with age to something richer than they had probably started as. It showed a woman standing on a raised platform with a kingdom spread out behind her. She was dressed in dark colours with something that caught the light at her throat. Her posture was straight and her expression was not soft but it was not hard either. It was certain. The particular certainty of someone who knows exactly where they are standing and why.
Underneath the painting someone had written a name in small careful letters.
Queen Mara. First of the Bloodfang line.
I was still looking at it when I heard
