The forest had always been a place of secret murmurs, a living tapestry of scent and sound that most in the kingdom chose to ignore. To Prince Erik, however, the Whispering Woods had become a second home—a realm where the ordinary rules of the palace dissolved into the rhythm of wind, bark, and bone. It had begun when he was twelve, the year his father, King Aric, sent him down a winding path to meet the old seer and healer known as Elsinka. Elsinka was not a woman of great stature, nor was she cloaked in the usual trappings of power. She was a head full of silver hair, a…

The first winter in the mountains was a bitter teacher. Prince Erik of Hrafnnes, aged ten, stood knee-deep in a drift of snow so pure it hurt his eyes, his small fingers too numb to properly work the knots in the rabbit snares Sigurd had shown him. The old forester’s voice, when it came, was not unkind, but it was as immutable as the granite peaks around them. “The cold does not care that you are a prince, boy. It only cares that you are slow.” Erik’s lips were chapped, his stomach a hollow, aching thing. He had missed the evening’s catch. Supper had been a husk of tough bark-bread…

After the Ausa Vanti— the day when Prince Erik was accepted into the kingdom, he was taken from the palace and given to two simple farmers who lived on the very edge of the kingdom’s wilds. Leifr and Gunnhildr were not a noble line. Their hands were callused from the earth, their faces weather worn by endless seasons of wind and rain. They owned a modest homestead, a low thatched hall, and two children— Ragna, a bright eyed girl of three summers, and Steinn, a lanky boy who could already lift a sack of barley over his shoulder. When the royal carriage rolled into their yard, the children stared at…