“...markers wash away every rainy season. Trees fall and change the turf, time takes its toll, and tribes toil…”

When I wrote that line into King Derreck’s dialogue to Eradena up on Twin Peaks in Chapter 1, I remember shaking my head as the plot twists tangled in my mind. Despair had its grip on me, and I could only land on one truth:
History repeats itself.

In this endless hamster wheel of human behavior, we keep forgetting what we already know.

And for a heartbeat, I felt helpless.

But then, hope whispered back.

When Sister Eliora spoke her prophecy to Eradena in Chapter 12, “A Kingdom that has not yet come…”, something inside me shifted. Hope broke through like tulip heads pushing past cold dirt, defying frost at the end of winter.

That’s what The Cord Between Two Queens is truly about: Hope, stitched through despair. A woman who should have none, yet still rises to claim everything, or lose it all if she chooses to surrender.

Chapter 14 carries that weight for me personally. I wrote it while grieving the loss of my Auntie Rose, whose life still moves quietly through mine.

Grief gave Eradena her beginning.
But grief also gave her life.

Consider this concept, my dearest Wielder Walker:
Death in the X-Wielder Realm has no claim on life.