Chapter 99. Salt Oath

Dawn did not break. It seeped. The sky remembered it had a color. Grass remembered frost. Veilgrove, strapped for war, stretched and pretended it hadn’t slept in its boots.

Syra ran the ridge line like a seamstress, stitching companies to ground. Orla rechecked every wardstone as if she could bully patience into quartz. The Ashfall pup trotted between ankles with the solemnity of a new clerk, stopping to sniff bandage buckets and a spearhead he disliked on principle.

Rhea sat with chalk and no circle. She drew straight lines on the flagstones, left them ugly, crossed them out, drew them again. Half an hour later she smiled, feral and tired. “You can learn again,” she said aloud, testing the size of the truth.

The Quiet Duke watched everything with a calm that made people want to shake him. Neris fed him stale bread without gentleness and explained, conversationally, which of his fingers she would take for each trick he tried. He nodded like a man ordering wine.