The grumbling started two days after the near-fall at the ravine.
It didn’t come as a formal complaint. It never did. It showed up in the usual places: in the way conversations dipped when she walked by, in the slightly-too-loud jokes at training, in the brittle laughter around the fire.
Aria caught the sharpest piece of it in the gear room.
She had come in to grab extra straps. Voices floated from the far side of the shelves, low enough that whoever was talking thought they were alone, loud enough that wolf ears had no trouble picking them up.
“…easy for her,” a male voice said. “She draws lines on paper and we’re the ones walking them.”
“She nearly got Kessa killed,” another answered. “Now she acts like she saved her.”
A third voice, lower, calmer: “Rowan trusts her. That’s enough
