Sera's Pov
I heard the gate before I saw anything. A horn, low and short, the signal Dex had explained to me days ago meant approaching visitors, not threat, formal rather than urgent. By the time I reached the upstairs window, Dex was already there, arms crossed, watching the same scene I was about to watch, like he'd known exactly where I'd come the moment that horn sounded.
"Don't," he said, before I'd even asked the question.
"Don't what?"
"Don't go down there." He didn't look at me, eyes fixed on the gate below. "Riven wants this handled at the gate. Not inside. Not in the lodge. That's deliberate, and you going down there undoes the whole point of it."
I stayed where I was and looked.
Riven was already outside the gate, not inside it, standing in the open ground between the wal
