A distant port city. A young girl boards the grand ship Marie, surrounded by burly men with red necks and tall spears. Her hair is covered in a dark green veil. Suddenly, a guard cries out in pain. An arrow is stuck in his neck. 

“Run,” he says, and she does, under the cover of foreign men. She makes it onto the ship, she bars the door to her cabin, she grabs her knife and holds her bed sheets tightly, her knuckles pale with fear. A cannon fires, a woman screams, and a crash is heard on the starboard side of the ship. 

Everything is calm. Marie is far from the coast and the cannonball lies at the bottom of the sea. 

Princess Anais of Woodgrove has escaped the revolution in Floris and is coming home.