She arrived at dawn.
Not alone — two people with her, positioned behind her left and right with the specific formation of people who were there for her security and understood that announcing that fact too clearly would undermine the message the arrival was supposed to send. The formation said: I bring protection, not force. The distinction mattered.
I felt her coming forty minutes before she arrived.
The frequency was — unexpected. Old, the way Fenris was old, the way anything that had been operating at significant power for a long time developed a particular density in its signature. But where Fenris's frequency had the quality of something that had been pointed in one direction for sixty years, Riven's moved differently.
It listened.
I'd never felt a frequency that listened before
