Morwenna's POV
Smoke bled into the sky like veins from a dying god. I stood at the highest balcony, wind biting at my skin, hair wild and damp with frost. Below, Aedric's army sprawled across the hills like a festering wound. Not just rogues anymore feral packs, disgraced nobles, castaways with nothing left to lose. They came for power. They came for me.
Leofric stood beside me, blood on his knuckles, his breathing still sharp from combat drills. He hadn’t said a word since he joined me. He didn’t have to. His silence was weight enough.
"They’re multiplying by the hour," I muttered, watching another line of tents rise in the distance. "Like a plague."
He nodded slowly. "They think you’ll splinter before the war begins. That the pressure will break you."
“They might be right.”
His ga
