Chapter 28. Kael’s Ultimatum

The first light of dawn had not yet broken when the messenger found her—a slender boy no older than sixteen, shoulders hunched beneath a too-large cloak, skin pale as moonlight and eyes the color of ashes. He carried himself like a reed in a storm, swaying with every breath, and when he spoke his voice trembled, a brittle promise of fear he could not quite swallow.

He stopped at the rim of the ash-ring that marked Thornroot’s border, its scorched earth still warm under last night’s embers. There he knelt, hands splayed before him, gaze fixed on the ashen ground as though the very dirt might convict him. “I was told to bring a message,” he said, voice flat and small, each word falling like a stone.

Aeryn did not flinch. In the half-light, she was a shadow cloaked in leather—the dark folds swallowing her form until only the sharp curve of her jaw and the dark braid of her hair were visible. “From whom?” she asked, words as even as the hush of the forest.

He did not a