The Keep woke to the sound of alarm bells.
They rang through the stone corridors in a deep, rolling clang, shaking Elinora from the half-sleep she’d been clinging to since before dawn. She was on her feet before she even thought about it, pulling her cloak around her shoulders and moving to the door.
The hallway outside was alive with motion — guards running toward the main stairs, servants hurrying in the opposite direction with baskets of supplies and water skins. The air was charged, the kind of electric tension that precedes bloodshed.
One of the guards she recognized — a broad-shouldered man named Varric who had escorted her more than once — caught sight of her and cursed under his breath. “You shouldn’t be out here.”
“What’s happening?” she demanded.
“Outer wall’s breached,” Var
