Kael didn’t sleep.
He took the chair Morwen had dragged over to the far side of the round table, and he watched her through the whole of the night. She didn’t sleep either. She moved between the maps and the dark water basin and the small fire crackling in the eastern grate, and she talked. Not in full accounts in pieces. History in pieces. Binding in pieces. The thing under the world that had spent five centuries waiting to claw its way back up, in pieces.
By the time the sky through the high window had gone the colour of old iron, Kael knew three things he hadn’t known when he first climbed those stairs.
One. Morwen was telling the truth.
Two. The seal she’d been holding was real. And it was failing.
Three. He was going to have to ride home and tell Aria.
That last one that was the
