Sword shall guide the hands of men... For over a thousand years, the kingdom of Lardan has been at peace: isolated from the world, slowly forgetting the wild and deadly magic of its origins. Now the deepest truths of the past and the darkest predictions for the future survive only in the verses of nursery rhymes. And prophecies are just nursery rhymes for gullible fools. Right? So thinks Kyali Corwynall, daughter of the Lord General and the court's only sword-wielding girl. She's never bothered believing in faery stories. But one day, an old nursery rhyme she's heard since childhood begins to come true, naming her as Sword and her brother and best friend as Song and Crown, saviors of the kingdom. When that ancient magic wakes, the future changes for everyone. In the space of a single night, her life unravels into violence and chaos. Now Kyali must find a way to master the magic her people have abandoned, or watch her world - and her closest friends - fall to a war older than the kingdom itself.