Excerpt
PROLOGUE YOU’VE HEARD THE story before. Or at least, you think you have. A girl. A war. A fire. She’s always painted like a saint. Soft halo, pretty robes, maybe holding a lily or a sword. They show you the ending — the ashes — but they never show you how it started. Because how do you even explain it? That a peasant girl, in the middle of nowhere, just heard something. Not a whisper. Not a dream. A full-blown, heart-stopping, tear-streaming, divine intervention. And she didn’t just believe it. She acted like it was real. Because to her? It was. She crossed into enemy territory. She told men twice her age to fight like angels. She raised the siege of a city. She crowned a king. And she did...