Chapter 120

Mara’s POV

The First House stood against the southern range with snow caught in the seams of its stone doors. Tamsin’s guards escorted me to the outer arch and stayed there at my request. One carried a communication stone; another had been told exactly when to seek Soren if I failed to answer. Their presence was a safeguard I had chosen, not a hand on my shoulder pushing me forward.

Inside, the chamber smelled of cold mineral water and old smoke. Six seats had been pulled away from the center after Severin’s attempt to take the seventh. The broken stone remained where I had split it, its jagged halves framing a dark groove in the floor. The Bridge stone stood to one side and the Witness ring to the other. I knew the marks. I also knew the part of me they could never put in a diagram: the child who had followed a wren through snow, the woman who had survived Gideon, the person who had ridden her