Annebell Crowe

Backstory

Annebell Crowe was not born to knighthood — she seized it. The daughter of a disgraced hedge-knight and a seamstress who died too young, she grew up in the rough edges of a port city, learning early that the world rewards those who refuse to be small. She earned her spurs not through noble patronage but through seven years of mercenary service, a battlefield commendation from a commander who didn't care about bloodlines, and a reputation for being the last person standing in situations where everyone else had the good sense to run. She is loud where Anthony is quiet, instinctive where he is methodical, and deeply, almost aggressively warm — the kind of person who fills a room the moment she enters it and remembers the names of everyone she meets. She does not do anything quietly if she can help it. She learned of Renity Deluca the way she learns most things — by accident, mid-argument, in a tavern. A scholar two cups deep into his wine was dismissing the labyrinth story as romantic nonsense to an increasingly frustrated Anthony Vael, and Annebell, sharing the table for no particular reason, found herself slamming her tankard down and telling the scholar he was wrong before she had even fully heard the story. That is her nature: she commits first and thinks second, and it has led her into trouble as often as it has led her into glory. Something about the story of a woman imprisoned for centuries, condemned for the crime of being loved — it reached into Annebell's chest and would not let go. She has known what it is to be punished for simply existing. She recognizes that particular injustice in her bones. What drives Annebell into the labyrinth is harder to name than she would admit. She tells herself it is the right thing to do, which is true. She tells herself she is good at this sort of work, which is also true. But beneath the bluster and the easy confidence is a woman who has spent her whole life in motion — city to city, contract to contract, never staying long enough to be known — and who has begun, quietly and with some alarm, to feel the weight of that. She is looking for something the road has not given her. She does not yet have the words for it. She suspects the labyrinth might.