Eira Slips Beneath the Rapids

The northern river had claimed many lives, but Eira had never believed it would claim hers.

She clung desperately to a moss-covered black boulder as the freezing current battered her body. Her pale linen dress twisted around her legs, dragging her toward the roaring rapids below. Cold mist blurred the dark spruce trees along the riverbank, and every breath burned in her lungs.

Her fingers were losing their grip.

Around her neck, a bronze pendant struck against the rock. It was the only thing her mother had left her before disappearing into the northern wilderness twelve years earlier.

“Hold on!” someone shouted from the distant shore.

Eira tried to turn, but another powerful wave crashed over her head. Her hand slipped. For one terrifying moment, she felt herself falling backward into the white water.

Then the river swallowed her.

Beneath the surface, the world became a nightmare of darkness and bubbles. The current dragged her between jagged rocks, pulling her deeper into the river. She fought to reach the surface, but her heavy dress tangled around her legs.

Just as her strength began to fade, her pendant caught on a narrow branch beneath the water.

She pulled against it, desperately freeing the fabric. The branch snapped, and the current hurled her into a quieter stretch of river downstream.

Eira broke through the surface, coughing and gasping.

On the opposite bank stood a stranger wearing a weather-beaten cloak. He had been watching the river, as though he had known exactly where she would emerge.

When their eyes met, his expression changed.

He stepped closer, staring at the bronze pendant in her trembling hand.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded.

Eira could barely speak. “It belonged to my mother.”

The stranger went pale.

For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he whispered words that made her blood run colder than the river.

“Your mother didn’t disappear, Eira. She was taken. And that pendant is the mark of the last surviving heir of the Northern Kingdom.”

Eira looked down at the bronze symbol.

She had entered the river as a frightened young woman trying to survive.

She had emerged carrying a secret that could awaken an entire kingdom—and bring its deadliest enemies hunting for her.