She found him at the northern perimeter.
He was alone — unusual for Theodore, who typically surrounded himself with a rotating entourage of junior warriors who competed for his attention the way planets compete for a sun's gravity. But tonight the perimeter was quiet, the Iron Fang wolves handling the outer watch, and Theodore stood at the tree line with his back to the compound and his face turned toward the mountains where the Shadow King was building his army.
He was aging. Nadia noticed it with the sharp, unwelcome clarity of someone who hadn't looked — truly looked — at a person in months and was now seeing the accumulated changes all at once. The silver in his close-cropped hair had spread, pushing past the temples and threading through what had once been solid black. The lines aro
