Natalie POV
The private solar corridor was empty of guards by the time the midday sun hit its peak, leaving nothing but the long, rectangular patches of white winter light to illuminate our return to the black wing. The absolute silence that had settled over the inner keep was proof that the minor lords had truly vanished from the mountain, their carriages crunching down the lower pass before the secondary ice could trap them in our courtyard.
I walked slowly beside Richard, allowing the heavy train of my midnight-blue gown to drag over the cold stone without checking my pace.
My body was humming with a strange, hollow resonance, the intense mental pressure of decoding Thomas’s ciphers finally giving way to a deep, primal demand for rest. The iron bands on my forearms caught the pale gl
