She had never seen so clearly before, and her teachers would praise her for it. The sound echoed in the vaulted ceiling of the practice room, and for once she gave in to the overwhelming feelings rushing through her. She drew her knees up and hugged them close, burying her face in the crook of her elbow, and because there was no one to hear her, she let out the sob that reared up in her throat. A trickle of sweat ran from her temple down her cheek. Her hands, folded in her lap, were trembling and chilled. Her heart was pounding, and there was an acrid taste in her mouth. She opened her eyes, blinking against the light of the single candle she had lit on the altar. She was wrenched out of the icy landscape and back into her body, where she was sitting in the empty practice hall, alone on her cushion. The boat cut through the water, leaving the shore behind, and just before the destination came into view, the vision ended. The droplets of water falling from the blade of the oar were tiny stars, extinguished as quickly as they burned into being.

But then Kaede reached down into the boat and lifted out a long oar, dipping it into the azure sea to propel the small craft away from the shore. Her lips parted as though she would speak. Loose strands of black hair whipped around her pale face there were spots of red on her wind-roughened cheeks. The rower was Kaede, and she looked back with dark, troubled eyes. She felt her tongue shaping the syllables of the person’s name, but she did not recognize what the name was until the rower turned to face her. She could not even hear herself breathing. All around her was an eerie, unnatural silence. She opened her mouth to call the rower back-she couldn’t bear the loss it would surely cripple her-and at that moment she realized she could hear nothing.

But she was afraid for this person’s life, and the fear raised a cold sweat on her skin and caused a sick lurch in her stomach, as though she were on a ship during a violent storm.

She was certain of it in the same way that one is instantly aware of the taste of sweetness in a drop of honey. Someone there was climbing into a rowboat, and she knew that she loved this person. The ground where she stood was frozen white, but twenty feet away, cold blue ocean lapped at the jagged shore. She saw a beach made of ice, and she felt her heart breaking. Xi names (designated with asterisks) have different pronunciation rules. In human names, the letters ae are pronounced like the a sound in mate and skate the letters ai are pronounced like the i sound in kite and site. In some cases, both syllables should be given equal weight.

In multisyllabic names, the emphasis is on the italicized syllable. There are some significant cultural differences between the time periods. Huntress is set in the same world as Ash, but it takes place many centuries earlier.

Huntress malinda lo