Swallow, daughter, pull them in, those words that sit upon your lips. Lock them deep inside your soul, hide them til they've time to grow. Close your mouth upon the power, curse not, cure not, til the hour. You won't speak and you won't tell, you won't call on heaven or hell. You will learn and you will thrive. Silence, daughter. Stay alive. The day my mother was killed, she told my father I wouldnt speak again, and she told him if I died, he would die too. Then she predicted the king would sell his soul and lose his son to the sky. My father has a claim to the throne, and he is waiting in the shadows for all of my mothers words to come to pass. He wants desperately to be king, and I just want to be free. But freedom will require escape, and Im a prisoner of my mothers curse and my fathers greed. I cant speak or make a sound, and I cant wield a sword or beguile a king. In a land purged of enchantment, love might be the only magic left, and who could ever love ... a bird?