he news reached Veskara nearly a month after Elira's return, carried not through Kael's usual careful letters but through an urgent rider dispatched the moment word broke within the capital itself, and Elira understood, watching the messenger's grim expression as he delivered the sealed missive, that whatever it contained had disrupted the fragile peace her return home had only just begun to settle into.
Halvard was dead.
She read Kael's letter twice before the full weight of it properly settled, understanding immediately, even before his careful explanation confirmed it, exactly what the timing implied. He was found in his cell three mornings ago, Kael wrote, poisoned, according to the physicians who examined him, though how the poison reached a man under constant guard remains entirely
