Winters upon winters have drifted by, and still, the North remains without its destined sovereign. One by one, pretenders have fallen, claimed by the death that guards the empty throne.
As despair consumes the realm - people dying, their purpose withering - a whispered prophecy stirs the ashes — the one they seek walks among the South.
While the Heavens remain without the offer of an heir to the North, a Southern Princess drinks to excess at a Royal Event and exposes royal rot.
She is ordered to be killed, steel drawn... when a certain Prince Commander claims her to be his wife.
Marriage was never her fate. Certainly not to him, but desperation writes its own vows. There were no promises, no expectations, but love came, slow and certain.
It seemed the sun had broken through the clouds, but something superiorly vital is then taken from this Princess, and she is sent to the worst of dungeons when her husband is at war. He returns, thinking she left him, and he falls into the deepest of despair.
The Princess’s heart is heavily marked in this strange new world where unfamiliar souls shape her. They teach her, harden her, and rebirth her into something nearly unrecognizable.
She flees with them as a circumstance exposes her to be the ruler they have been in search of.
Through hardship and pain, she ascends—not only to lead the North but to stir the balance of the universe itself.
But at what price? What must be given?
Follow her odyssey - a journey of life, of love, betrayal, revenge, of war and transformation, and of staggering power that shakes worlds.
Her name is Nadezhda.
Nadezhda means hope. She is our hope.