Chapter 59. Aeryn Vale

Dawn did not break cleanly. It bled across the horizon in bruised purples and raw sienna, a slow, tender bruising of color that barely pressed through the leafy vault overhead. The forest woke under a hush of soft rust and burnished copper, each beam of light trembling through the leaves like embers of an extinguished flame. Low mist clung to the earth, swirling in lazy eddies around the half-cooled ashes of last night’s fire, curling around sleeping bodies as if it could not bear to relinquish its warmth.

The camp did not wake with shouts or orderly commands. It stirred. A twig snapped here, a blanket shifted there, breath deepened in the tents and lean-tos. No bell tolled. No officer barked orders. Instead there was only the familiar cadence of hearts beating, of muscles unwinding after years of rigid discipline, and the quiet realization that, for the first time in as many lifetimes as any of them could count, no one remained to dictate their next step.

Aeryn rose bef