They come.
The horn’s note still shivered in my bones when I forced myself to breathe. Men ran like a skinned animal’s last twitch. Smoke pushed under doors. The northern gate had been breached and the causeway was a moving black mass. Men in strange colors poured through as if they owned the road.
“Hold!” I barked, because orders still sounded like armor and because someone had to make them. Men nearest me snapped to it—Rowan’s captains, the queen’s guards, a handful of archers with eyes like hawks. They formed a ragged line at the gap, pikes braced, shields up.
Liora was at my side, breath cutting. “Kael,” she said, “they’re pushing the outer ring. They’ll split the force and come in from the south. If the wing falls, they’ll take the queen.” Her voice was small and fierce, like a kni
