Aldric died four days later.
Silas sent word through the Omega network, the same infrastructure Jax had been building since before the rite, the invisible web of people who cooked the food and cleaned the halls and knew everything. The message was three sentences. The Great Alpha passed at dawn. Peacefully, which is more than he deserved and less than he feared. Thornridge stands.
I read it sitting on the steps of Moonstone Hall in the early morning, the Hall behind me still smelling of covenant recalibration and old cedar, the stone steps cold through my clothes. Kael was inside, had been since the message arrived, doing the thing people do when a parent dies, and the grief is complicated by everything the parent did to make it complicated.
I didn't go in immediately. I gave him the ti
