Such beauty, she’d argued, might entice neighboring Barons to attack the city, or even the King of the Middle Kingdom himself might come to take her as a wife for his eldest son. And he was notorious for his huge belly and bad temper. He wasn’t at all like the youngest son, who was always away at war.
And then, after the eight years passed, a tutor from the Temple of the Goddess Kestanie, the patroness of their town, could come to teach the girl, and then no one would dare harm her.
Still, her parents announced her name to the public. She was to be called Tise, in honor of one of Miristal’s companions, who eternally chased her older sister across the night sky.
And that night, as the town of Tid celebrated Tise’s birth, two people mourned on the outskirts of it. One of them was a woman
