Dawn arrived bruised.
The forest held its breath the way a body does after a blow. Fog clung low between black trunks, and every leaf seemed to wear ash from fires that hadn’t burned here. Lena woke to the cold ache of spent power and the heavier ache of memory—the Bloodhound’s roar, assassins’ silver masks, the way her own scream had emptied a room and filled it with bones.
The mark over her collarbone pulsed once, twice, a slow, deep drum. The three crowns flickered faintly when she sat up, only a shimmer in the air, like heat seen over stone. She clutched her cloak closer. The fabric still smelled faintly of Dominic—woodsmoke and pine—even after a night of running.
Around their small camp the survivors moved softly. Men and women who had chosen her not because the road promised safet
