When night fell, house Thorne fell. The Lady Raevyn had succumbed to the shadow presence of the queen, Alysanne, and had been threatened from the shadows. Her daughter Shaeryn, her heir, and her son Aelar had been taken captive by the queen on false charges of debt. Her reputation ruined, Lady Raevyn was forced to bend to Alysanne,to insure the safety of her children. In a public display, the queen forced Lady Raevyn to bow, and secretly put her on a treasonous mission: to act as aspy and a saboteur to an enemy queen. The queen Kathryn Sommyr of Sothgar,closest ally and confident of Lady Raevyn, was thought to be stirring rebellion in the south. Lady Raevyn was to uncover this plot and condemn Kathryn to death. Her closest ally, her closest friend. Now her greatest enemy...
Raevyn Thorne, a lady of the court, sailed alongside common barbarians. The men around her were all surly, muscular men, most of them coming from the north. Every one of them had a beard worthy of the highest praise, and each time the strong sea-wind blew, their whiskers flapped like birds. Raevyn made sure to move out of the way whenever this happened. Their journey had been mostly uneventful, excluding the occasional storm and dragon, the dragons they did see being too small to harm anyone. Raevyn had seen dragons up north big enough to fit an entire castle in their mouth, and had nearly died fighting War Dragons in the east. House Thorne had never had a Royal Dragon, like the noble families of the north, south, and east did. For some reason, dragons hatched everywhere except the west, a curse that many queens had tried to break.