{"And at that moment, we all understood: Ysara was the Queen of Witches, a memory of the sea itself, rising to remind the world it had never been silent."}
I had seen magic before, raw, wild, tamed, broken. I had seen it split mountains and mend oceans. But nothing prepared me for Ysara Thorne standing barefoot in the heart of the Pearl Castle Garden. The air shimmered around her like it could not contain the magnitude of what she was. Sunlight streamed down in ribbons of silver, casting her in a holy glow, though what she carried was anything but angelic. She was storm-bound, soul-bound. And the garden, ancient, sea-fed, long-tied to the castle's pulse, recognized her.
