Rhydian's POV
I'm dressed and moving before Sable finishes pounding on my door, the alarm bell still ringing somewhere below, urgent and continuous in a way it's only rung twice in the six years I've held this seat. Once, by a rockslide that took out half the northern grazing fields. Once, because of a fire that started too fast to be accidental, three years back, we traced it to its source. Neither time did the bell mean what I already suspect it means tonight.
"Eastern fence," she says, falling into step beside me as I take the stairs two at a time. "Wards failed, no warning, no gradual weakening. One minute they were holding, the next they were just gone."
"Wards don't fail like that on their own."
"No," she agrees grimly. "They don't."
By the time we reach the courtyard, half the
