(Aria’s POV)
The kitchens were a cave of warmth at that hour, a place of steady, honest labor where night swallowed the rest of the keep and only the hearth remained witness. We’d finished the last of the evening pots; the clatter of serving had faded hours ago. I liked the hush, the way heat thinned the edges of grief and left only work. It made thinking manageable—if thinking ever was.
Tonight, only three of us remained: my mother with a basket of herbs, a tired apprentice named Mara finishing the last loaves, and me.
Word had gone out for the others to sleep;
Kaelen’s orders for strict quiet after the day’s alarms kept most to their rooms. It meant we were alone, just the three of us, the kettle hissing and the embers bright.
Then Serena came in.
I should have heard her before s
