Esdragon’s duke is bored. Dillan-Rhis should have been safe from administrative duties—he’s a third son, and free to please himself. But fate and plague intervene, and his freedom is curtailed. A duke of Esdragon has duties, and even a duke who is partnered with the immortal Warhorse Valadan finds those duties less than engaging.
So when a rainy night—and is there any other sort of night in Esdragon?—brings Marist Son of Marist, High King of all Calandra to his door, disguised and proposing a secret adventure, the duke is sorely tempted. Before duty recalled Rhis to Esdragon, he rode at Marist’s side for years, bringing one stronghold after another under Marist’s sway. Now Marist is called to Channadran by dreams sent him by a goddess, and who should accompany him but his boon companion?
What harm? A month of adventuring in a new land, wandering, seeing new sights, and then safe back home on his swift, magical steed, before anyone notices he’s gone. Rhis says nothing about the dreams he has begun to have, of a red-haired woman standing atop a cliff in Channadran, begging him to rescue her.
The duke does not believe that the king is called. He does not understand that his dreams are anything more than dreams. And he does not know that he is followed by a small black wolf with a scar on her nose…Wyndasha, whose grandmother’s voice ceaselessly tells her to “chase destiny.”