We brought Roan back to Crescent Hollow in chains, and for a few days it felt like we'd cut the head off the war.
Roan had been the mind of the rogue army the patient organizer, the one who'd united a dozen clans that had never once bent to anyone. Take him, and the dark should have scattered back into the lawless nothing it came from. That was the theory. That was what any strategist would have expected.
It didn't happen.
"The army's still there," Bron reported grimly, a week after the pass. "Weaker. Slower. Roan was the one holding it together, and without him the clans are fraying fighting among themselves, some drifting back east. But they haven't scattered. Something's still holding them." His weathered face was troubled. "And it's the wrong something. Roan held them with cunning p
