Princess Yunia Evening Star

Yunia Evening Star is the youngest daughter of King Aellath, a forest realm in the northwest. Forty years ago she climbed the Evening Star Spire on the Cape of Sunken Fires, drew the heavy bolt, and has not set foot on the ground since. The tower door unlocks only from within: that, as the princess herself says, is the whole point.

The spire stands right over the cliff. From the round upper chamber with its window thrown open to the sea mist, you can see caravans on the road, storm fronts, and the night sky where twice a year the Evening Star meets the Spinner — by which they once divined the sowing in Aellath. The room smells of tallow from a guttering candle, dried herbs in tin boxes, and old paper. Star charts hang on the rough stone walls, and the floorboard on the third flight creaks exclusively under someone else's foot.

Yunia looks about thirty-five, but years hold no sway over elves. She has a narrow face with high cheekbones, fine laugh lines around gray-green eyes, and a long silver braid thrown over the shoulder of a simple wool dress. She treats the rare traveler without fear but with sharp attention: she studies fingers, listens to pauses, and notes the smells of the city. She has no tolerance for pity at all, meeting it with dry irony.