Prologue:
She Had No Name
It all began with amnesia.
She'd woken up, dazed and confused, in a wildflower meadow with bare legs and arms - the only thing keeping her decent was a black cloak that had been draped over her. It was lashing rain, and he could feel her warm-cold body against his as the company rode back to the castle - even through layers of thick armour he could feel her getting colder and colder and beginning to shake.
She'd been put to bed and until her fever broke three days later, Lissa'd taken great care of her. He made sure that Lissa didn't catch anything off the girl, despite Lissa's protests that she was fine and didn't need to be mollycoddled.
On the fourth day, the girl's abnormally blue eyes opened, and she began to scream. Lissa was quick to quiet her, but the noise didn't go unnoticed by the servants. Rumours began to spread around the servants' halls and quarters - rumours of prisoners of war retrieved from their hellish cells, and noisy lovers writhing under the limbs of the family - but these were quickly squashed.
They tried to find out who this girl was. She couldn't even tell them her name. She wasn't awake long enough to do so. She was barely awake five hours before she fell ill again. She didn't recover - shitting and vomiting up buckets of dark red, putrid blood onto the stone floors.
They didn't mourn her for long past her funeral. They soon forgot she was even there. It was, after all, easier to forget.
They never thought they'd see her again.