Princess Raine's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Princess Raine pressed her palm to the fountain in the castle garden, and the water rose to meet her hand. It coiled around her wrist like a ribbon, warm and eager, and no one had ever taught her how. Twenty-one years the moon goddess's gift had lived inside her, and lately it would not stay still. Each night the restlessness pulled harder. She wanted to name it, to understand what she was, but she could not read the feeling. She only knew it pointed her somewhere she had never been. Her parents found her there, as they always did. King Adam came first, his gray beard damp with morning mist, his hands already reaching to draw her back from the water's edge. "You'll catch cold, little one," he said, though she was a grown woman. He had never stopped calling her that. Queen Della followed, her blonde curls loose over her shoulders. She saw the water twisting around Raine's wrist and went pale. "Let it go," she whispered. "Please." Raine opened her hand. The water fell. "I can't sleep," she said. "Something is missing, Mother. I feel it every night, tugging me. But I don't know what it wants or which way to go." The king and queen traded a look. Raine had seen that look her whole life. It meant they were deciding how much to protect her from. "It's your gift," Della said at last. "The goddess's water. It grows stronger, and we always knew it might." She sat on the fountain's stone edge and took Raine's wet hand. "There is a tribe, far to the north. They worship the moon goddess. They would understand what stirs in you. They could teach you to read it." Raine's heart jumped. "Then I'll go to them." "It's months of hard travel," Adam said. His voice cracked. "Past the borders. Through country we cannot guard. You have never spent a night outside these walls." "Because you never let me," Raine said. Not cruel. Just true. He had no answer for that. He looked at his hands. Raine turned to her mother. "You know the way?" Della was quiet a long moment. Then she nodded. "I know how to find them. And I know I cannot keep you here while you ache like this." She pressed Raine's hand between both of hers. "The restlessness is not sickness. It is direction. It points north, to your beginning." The words landed like a key in a lock. The pull inside Raine finally had a shape. North. The tribe. The goddess who made her. "Then I know where to begin," Raine said. Adam rose slowly. "If you go," he said, "you go soon, but allow me to ready everything, you will need a mount and provisions." His jaw tightened. "And you will not go alone." Raine did not yet know who he meant. But the road north was open now, and morning would not wait.