Meet Coralin: Paladin Knight of What God Has Ordained

She’s a priestess, a paladin knight, a mystic, and a romantasy heroine — and she’s been living in my head for longer than I’d like to admit. Allow me to introduce her properly.

If you’ve been following along here at MetPub, you’ve probably seen Coralin’s portrait come up once or twice. You may have noticed those steady gray eyes and that serious expression and thought, who is she? Well, she’s the heroine of What God Has Ordained, the first book in our upcoming Legacy of Chandar series — and our third title overall. And she’s been a long time coming.

Her full name is Damië Coralin Callens. Damië is a form of address — an old D’wan word that roughly translates to “sister,” or “young priestess” — a title she’s earned. She’s also the Baroness of Andas in the duchy of Núrinen in the kingdom of Vin-Nórë, though she left that life behind years ago. Also an ordained priestess of the Guardian Paladins, a two-time recipient of the Order of the White Rose — one of the most coveted military honors in Par-Isen — and a mystic who hears the voice of her god with startling clarity.

She is, in short, a lot of things. But at her core, she’s someone who has spent her entire life learning what it means to be genuinely brave.

An Unusual Beginning — for a Paladin Knight

Coralin’s story starts in loss. She was just three years old when a catastrophic flood killed her parents, Dominic and Cristal Callens, the Baron and Baroness of Andas, as they were trying to rescue people trapped by the rising waters. With no surviving family to take her in, she was made the ward of Duke Robaire Mirac of Núrinen and his wife, Queen Ariellë Chandrikken of Vin-Nórë.

Which means she grew up, essentially, as a princess.

She’s quick to clarify that it didn’t feel that way to her at the time — her guardians were always honest with her about who she was and where she came from, so she never had any illusions about being their child by birth. But she was never made to feel lesser, either. She was raised alongside the Duke’s sons: Castamir, the older brother who got everyone into trouble and then got them back out again, and Athos — born on the same night as Coralin, within the same hour — who was in every meaningful sense her twin. If you’ve read our post introducing Prince Athos, you already know a little of what that bond was like. Spoiler: it runs deep, and it becomes one of the beating hearts of What God Has Ordained.

She lived with that family for ten years, and by her own account it was a loving, protected, privileged childhood — the best parts of which she didn’t fully appreciate until she had to leave it.

Called to Something Larger

The reason she left was nothing as simple as ambition or duty. It was rather more dramatic than that.

Around age thirteen, Coralin began falling into involuntary trances — sometimes for hours — in which she saw and spoke with the Lord and Lady of Paladins. These weren’t dreams. They weren’t imagination. The family’s own priestess, herself a mystic, soon recognized what was happening: Coralin had been given mystical gifts, and they were manifesting faster than anyone could safely manage without specialized training.

So with her guardians’ blessing, she was sent south to Par-Isen — eight or nine hundred kilometers away — to Saint Hilden’s Monastery, where she could be properly trained to live with and manage what she’d been given.

She was thirteen. It was a month-long journey through dangerous, war-riven country. And it was the last time she would see Athos, or Núrinen, for many years.

The Making of a Paladin Knight

The years at Saint Hilden’s, lonely and hard as they sometimes were, shaped her into the woman she is. She became a priestess of the Guardian Paladins, trained in mysticism, theology, and — in time — the arts of war. She developed a quiet, unshakeable faith that is less about certainty and more about showing up anyway, even when showing up is terrifying.

And there were certainly terrifying moments.

The one she’s most willing to talk about is her posting to Meridar Vale — specifically to border Outpost One, on Par-Isen’s frontier with Confederation territory. Women capable of bearing children are not permitted in postings where there is any risk of capture by Confederation forces. And yet Coralin served there long enough to earn not one but two White Rose awards. The first came from leading a company of knights-paladin out of the relative safety of the outpost to investigate an ambush — a decision that, by her own admission, required more courage than she was entirely sure she had. The second is largely sealed under confidentiality by the Consulate for the Verification of Miracles and the Nominations of the Saints — what everyone in Par-Isen calls “Saints and Miracles” for obvious reasons — but what she can say is that it involved discovering and destroying one of the Confederation’s breeding camps in the swamps beyond the old Vin-Llammáz border, and then leading traumatized survivors back to safety.

How did she get to Outpost One in the first place, given all the rules against it? She’ll tell you the Lady of Paladins told her it was time to go. She’ll also tell you, with complete sincerity, that she would never have had the courage to go there on her own initiative.

And here’s the thing about Coralin that makes her worth reading about: when asked if the Lady gave her courage, she says no. She says the Lady helped her find her own.

That’s the woman at the heart of What God Has Ordained.

Where She Is Now: What God Has Ordained Begins

By the time our story opens, Coralin is no longer at Outpost One. She’s been transferred back to Khir-Isen, the Holy City, working under her mentor Sijainen Maryam Dupré in international politics — or what passes for them in the middle of the ongoing war — and splitting her time with the office of their Yl-Sarjaan, Matrië Avice Ward, learning what it takes to run a church of her own someday. She’s also been called into service at the Imprimæ’s court, which is where What God Has Ordained really begins.

Oh, and there’s the small matter of Prince Athos — her childhood “twin,” now Royal Marshal of the Armies of Vin-Nórë — and the fact that they’ve been corresponding all these years, and haven’t seen each other since she was thirteen, AND are about to find themselves on the same side of the same very complicated situation.

No pressure.

Want More Coralin?

If this is your first introduction to her, the good news is you don’t have to wait for the book to learn more. Subscribe to The Menelon Gazette and you’ll receive Meridar Outpost One for free — a novelette-length prequel story that covers Coralin’s first battle at the border outpost and the choices she made that earned her that first White Rose award, at age twenty-one. It’s available in PDF or ePUB, and it’s a great place to start.

What God Has Ordained, the first book in the Legacy of Chandar series, is coming soon. We can’t wait for you to meet her!