Kael came home on the fourth day, a day later than he had promised, and I was on the wall when he rode up the northern road.
I had told myself I would not be. I had told myself a queen did not stand on the wall like a girl waiting for a boy. But Senna's words had stayed with me — that here, the people who loved you came back, and that I was allowed to wait for them — and so when the horn sounded from the northern watch, I was on the wall before I had decided to be, and I watched the small column come up the road, and I found his shape among them before they were close enough for anyone else to be sure.
He looked for me first. Before the gate, before the guards, before anything. His eyes went up to the wall and found my face, exactly as Senna had said they would, and something in his shou
