Chapter 122

Mara’s POV

Lysa came off the threshold when the night guard took her place. She showed me the cleaned handover notch and opened her own fingers, one at a time, before she went for breakfast. Nobody had to ask a Warden to let her go. The old route still reached for the door when she left, so I marked that danger on the drawing.

By the third morning I understood why the two hands had been carved beneath the seat. One person could refuse to rule another; the other could refuse to be counted as agreeing simply because she stood nearby. Neither could make that answer for the other. The House had left the older rule under stone when Severin taught it to expect a single ruler.

I went through Elara’s journal again. There was no promise that freeing the old routes would leave every warning ward intact. A mill might lose its ice alarm for a night. A guard could leave a gat