The town does not burn.
That is the point.
⸻
Zane hears about it just after dawn, while the heir is still half-asleep, cheek pressed warm against his chest, breath fogging the wool of Zane’s cloak. The morning is ordinary enough to be insulting. Pale sky. Frost softening on the stones. Someone laughing near the cookfires because something small went right.
Jason crosses the yard too quickly.
“They skipped it,” he says.
Zane knows immediately what he means.
“Which one,” Zane asks.
Jason swallows. “Red Hollow.”
Zane closes his eyes.
Red Hollow sits just off the southern bend. Not wealthy. Not strategic. Too small to be worth a speech and too stubborn to be worth charity. They never signed. They never begged. They paid what they could, when they could, to neighbors instead of author
