Lenora's POV
Senna was at the eastern settlement, helping Rowan with a vegetable plot that had been somewhat optimistic about the spring's timing.
She looked up when I arrived, brushed soil from her hands, and read my face with the efficiency of someone who has learned to see trouble coming.
"Kellan Brosse," I said.
She went very still.
"You know him," I said.
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she sat down on the garden wall with the posture of someone who has been holding something back and has decided, finally, to stop.
"We grew up together," she said. "In the guard's residential quarters. His mother was a laundress. Mine cooked." She looked at her hands. "We were the same age. He was — he was kind, when he was young. Quiet. Good with animals."
"When did that change?"
"When
