Morning came slowly to Thorn Stronghold.
Clouds cloaked the sky in a pewter gray, and the usual forest chorus was muted, as if nature itself stood in reverence—or fear.
Inside the infirmary, time crawled.
Quinn barely slept. He sat in a chair pulled close to Rowan’s bedside, fingers laced with his son’s tiny ones, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest with a kind of reverence that only came after nearly losing something you’d built your entire world around.
Rowan looked peaceful now. But the mark on his chest hadn’t faded.
It glowed softly still, like embers beneath skin.
Quinn ran a thumb gently across Rowan’s brow. “You brought him back,” he whispered. “But what did you leave behind?”
Behind him, Jace stirred from the couch where he’d crashed hours ago, exhaustion finally p
