I had been afraid of many things in my life.
Gerald's silences. The specific quality of a room when he had already made a decision and was waiting for you to walk into it. The moment on Mating Night when I had opened Damien's door and found the thing I had been half expecting for months and had been hoping I was wrong about.
The rogues stepping out of the dark by the river.
The mark in the mirror.
The car pulling up to Ironpeak's gates with Lillian's hand in mine and three days of Gerald's ultimatum behind me and no clear picture of what was on the other side of the gate.
I had been afraid of all of those things.
What I felt standing in the eastern tree line with Caden's radio crackling and Aldric Crane's petition sitting at the western gate was different from all of them.
It was no
