The first lesson was not about swords or battle strategies. It was about silence.
It came right after dawn, when the cold light slipped through the narrow crack of a gray, lifeless morning. He did not enter the cell. He simply stood at the entrance and said, "Come. We're walking."
I had no choice.
My legs still ached, and a deep pain throbbed in my side, but something in his voice—that strange blend of softness and steel—forced me to stand and follow him.
He did not lead me to the training yard or the great hall. Instead, he brought me to a high balcony overlooking the vast valley that separated our kingdoms.
The air here was harsher, sharp with a cold that cut straight through the bones.
We stood there in silence for what felt like an eternity. He stared toward the horizon, where the kingdom of Nevis vanished behind mist and mountains. Meanwhile, I watched him, trying to unravel the mystery that surrounded him.
"What are you waiting for?" I finally asked. The silence weighed on me more heavily than any chains.
He slowly turned his head toward me. His gray eyes caught the pale morning light.
"I'm not waiting," he said calmly. "I'm listening."
"Listening to what? There's nothing here but wind."
"That," he said, stepping closer, his long shadow swallowing half the balcony, "is your first lesson."
"The wind carries news. It carries the scent of snow coming from Nevis. It carries the sound of a glacier melting in the eastern valley."
He paused, tilting his head slightly as if listening more carefully.
"And it carries… the sound of wings."
I listened.
All I heard was the mournful howl of the wind.
"I hear nothing."
"That's because you haven't learned to listen yet."
His voice remained calm, but there was a sharp edge of reprimand in it.
"In Nevis, they taught you to be a warrior. To strike first.
But here, in these mountains, survival belongs to the most patient. To the one whose ears hear danger before their eyes see it."
Anger burned inside me.
He was criticizing my people—everything I had been raised to believe.
"Patience does not build kingdoms."
"But it protects them," he replied quietly.
"Your uncle Valkar is a reckless man. He wants war because it's the only language he understands. Like hunting dogs that bark before they bite."
"And you?" I asked. "What do you want?"
He smiled that unsettling smile—the one that never reached his eyes.
"I want to see if the princess of Nevis is capable of silencing the noise of the past in her mind… and learning to listen to the world around her."
He turned his gaze back toward the horizon.
"Lesson one: the world is always speaking. But very few know how to listen."
Then he left me alone on the balcony, trembling from the cold—and from his words.
I remained there for a long time, trying to truly listen.
And for the first time, I began to hear more than just the wind.
I heard the heartbeat of the mountain.
The whisper of clouds.
And the sound of my own fear.
And when I finally heard, somewhere far away, the muffled roar of a dragon, I realized he had been right.
The world was speaking.
And it sounded as if it was warning us of something dangerous.
Returning to the cell felt different from leaving it.
Now I carried a new burden—the burden of the questions Kieran had planted inside my mind.
Was he truly teaching me?
Or was this simply a more subtle way of breaking my will?
The door closed behind me, leaving me in the stone silence of the dungeon.
But the silence was no longer silent.
I could hear the rhythm of my heartbeat, the breath leaving my lungs, and the whisper of the wind beyond the walls—sounds that now carried meaning.
I sat on the bed, trying to gather my thoughts.
I needed to focus on escape. On returning to Nevis.
But something else tugged at me.
A dangerous curiosity.
What did Kieran truly want?
And why was he treating me like a student instead of a prisoner?
Suddenly I heard a familiar sound—soft footsteps approaching the door.
It was the same boy who had asked me about Glacier.
He stopped outside the door and sighed nervously, as if gathering courage.
"Princess of Nevis?" he whispered timidly.
"Yes?" I replied, trying to sound gentle and nonthreatening.
"Is it true that in Nevis there are lakes of liquid water… even in the harshest winter?"
It was another innocent question.
I smiled in the darkness.
"Yes," I said softly. "Wide blue lakes that reflect the sky. And in the summer, crimson flowers bloom along their shores."
He was silent for a moment.
Then he said quietly, with childlike longing,
"Here… everything freezes.
Sometimes even our breath."
He did not come with the midday meal.
He came at dusk, when darkness began weaving its first threads through the narrow opening of the cell.
This time, he was not alone.
Malakai stood beside him, holding a torch that cast dancing shadows along the walls, making Kieran's face appear carved from darkness and fire.
"It's time for the second lesson," Kieran said, his voice rising above the howling wind outside.
"I didn't realize kidnapping people counted as education," I replied dryly, without moving from the bed.
He ignored my sarcasm.
"Today, you will witness the true power of Amber. Not the power of the sword… but the power of the bond."
"The bond?"
Malakai smiled knowingly.
"You'll enjoy this, princess. Very few are granted this sight."
Kieran led me out of the dungeon, up winding stone corridors toward the top of the tower.
The higher we climbed, the colder the air became.