An acolyte found me in the Hall of Echoes. He bowed until his forehead almost touched his hands.
The celestial spheres overhead were still chiming when he entered. One clear note followed another through his report.
I closed the chart I had been reading.
“High Priestess, he has returned.”
Caleb knelt at the far end of the throne room. His furs and armor were gone. He wore the rough gray tunic of a penitent.
As the guards brought him closer, his forehead stayed against the marble.
Mud had dried along the hem and across his bare forearms. Without cloak or armor, he looked smaller than he had on the Sanctuary steps a week earlier.
I sat on the throne carved from a single piece of moonstone.
“You were told never to return.”
“I left you in the ice cave,” he said into the floor. “I shut
