Nobody else heard it.
I checked. Quietly, without making it a thing, I watched the people nearest the treeline for any sign of reaction. Darro's tent was still. The watch pairs continued their low conversations. Fen was twenty feet to my left and he was looking at the sky, not the trees.
Just me.
Which meant it wasn't a sound. Not technically. It was the entity making itself perceptible to the one person it was interested in, which was its own kind of message. I'm here. I'm close. I know where you are.
I turned away from the treeline deliberately and walked back to the fire.
Oren watched me sit down. He'd seen my face change at the treeline. He didn't ask. He poured something hot from a battered metal pot into a cup and handed it across. It was tea, badly made, the kind that tastes mo
