To Hyeon Jeong the winters of Songak were too mild, too dry and too silent. She had spent nearly two decades of her life there and yet her ears never felt quite at peace without the roaring winds of the North. The silent winter nights kept her awake more than once in her recent memory.
When the wind comes howling now, like a hungry wolf that has been roused from decades of sleep she is torn from her bed in the middle of the night. Storms are unheard of in these parts of the country, so much so that the queen is not even slightly surprised to see her ladies stepping in and out of the sliding doors at the odd hour in the night, bringing more coal to the fire or more fur for her bed. Sometime in the night before she had been awakened, they had blocked off the windows leading to her courtyard, sealing them against the storm.
