Beside her, Silas, the loyal squire, gripped his sword. He wasn't a hero of legend, just a man who believed in a promise. "Then we move faster," he countered, though the sweat on his brow told a different story.
The road to the was still long, and the Crones were still watching, but for the first time, the girl who was a kitchen maid felt like a queen.
Elora Danan, the girl who had spent her life as "Dove," the kitchen maid, looked at her hands. They were trembling. Only hours ago, she had been captured by the , agents of a darkness she barely understood. She had escaped, but the woods felt like a cage. Every snap of a twig sounded like the clicking teeth of the Lich , the terrifying sorcerer-assassin hunting her through the brush.
"Magic isn't a sword, Elora," Willow said, his eyes scanning the treeline. "You don't just swing it. You have to want the world to change. You have to command the air to be fire, the earth to be a shield."