Thoren
The council room felt altered in a way I could not ignore, and I realized as I took my seat that the difference had little to do with the guards awaiting judgment and everything to do with who was not there.
Kael’s absence sat in the room like another presence.
Salas occupied the chair at my right, rigid with the formality of temporarily filling a role he knew was not his, but the instinctive ease that normally grounded these proceedings was missing. I felt it in every pause. In every glance toward a place my mind still expected to find my Beta.
Perhaps that was fitting.
Very little in the kingdom remained untouched.
The three guards involved in the failures surrounding Michelle’s death stood under escort at the far end of the chamber, visibly aware that uncertainty was about
