The war council met at noon. I was not invited. I attended anyway.
Nobody asked me to leave. I had not expected them to, not because I had any particular authority in the Vael Kingdom’s council chamber, but because the specific kind of confidence required to tell the moon-born Healer to leave a meeting about an incoming attack was apparently not available at that particular table.
Jasper looked at me once when I came in and sat down. He looked back at his commanders. We proceeded.
The intelligence was stark and detailed in the way of information assembled from the inside. Darius had given the enemy kingdom three years of strategic data: guard rotations, patrol routes, the palace’s structural weak points, the identities of the most capable enforcers and the shift schedules that left the
