Start Here: Whispers of the Wyrm
October 23, 2026
If you've just found your way here, hello. Pull up a stool. The fire's low, but the tea's still hot.
The Bard and the Blade Saga begins with Whispers of the Wyrm, and it arrives on Tuesday, October 27. That's four days from now.
Here's the short version. The war is over, and nobody's quite sure what that means yet. The roads are open. The inns are full of people who'd rather not talk about it. Two travelers fall into step for their own practical reasons.
One is a bard who signs inn registers with a single word, Drake. She carries a red-honey wood lute named Honey, and her fingertips are rough from it. The other is a swordsman named Dhaelen, who wears two blades: plain steel at the hip, and Ignivar, a dragon-bone sword he draws from over his shoulder. They aren't friends at the start. Friends come later, slowly, the expensive way.
The world has five kingdoms, each with its own crown and its own gemstone. Garnet for Caelondor, citrine for Tharavos, amethyst for Eiloria, emerald for Veythar, sapphire for Morvane. Two moons, Vael and Lunareth. A year of ten months and a week of eight days, which you'll get used to faster than you'd expect. Tharavos feeds everyone else. Eiloria sings. Morvane keeps its face to the sea.
I should say who this is for. If you like a road that costs something, blisters and wet boots and beds paid for by the night, you'll be fine here. If you like music treated as real work, and swords with a history instead of a glow, better still. And if the slow, earned kind of company is your favorite thing in a story, pull your chair closer.
You don't need to know anything before you start. That's the point of Book One.
If you'd like to follow along until Tuesday, you can add Whispers of the Wyrm on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/aabennette, and you'll find everything else at https://aabennette.com. I'll be posting here most days between now and then, scenes and lore and the odd confession about how a chapter got written.
So tell me. When you open a new fantasy, what do you want waiting on the first page? A map, a song, a stranger at the door?
Whispers of the Wyrm, Book One of The Bard and the Blade Saga.