Ariana was used to the stares. To the sniggering laughter. After all, she was a deaf vendor of beautiful songbirds. She didn't care what the townsfolk said about her. She would continue to scour the width and breadth of England with her uncle and brother on her determined quest - to track down the bandits who had brutally slaughtered her parents. She would bring to justice those who had stolen her hearing and destroyed all she held dear.
Falmouth was a far cry from her home in the far north, but the parade of smug priests and snooty noblewomen seemed mirror images of the countless villages they had passed through over the years. Until Olivier. Was he a flint-eyed soldier returned home from the Crusades? A sharp-edged mercenary on a job? Whoever he was, she recognized herself in him - the drive to achieve one's goal, whatever harrowing sacrifices it required. She just prayed that Olivier's path would stop overlapping with her own. Because if he got in the way of her finally achieving her revenge, she would be forced to make that ultimate sacrifice.