The night was not kind.
The beacon’s silver thread leaned heavier, glowing in the dark like a line waiting for a cruel teacher’s red mark. Villagers dozed in fits, some under shawls, some sitting upright in the Borrowed Watch chair with eyes fixed on shadows that shifted too quickly. Every time a child stirred, someone whispered their name as if that alone could keep the world from editing them away.
Lena sat with her back against the cottage wall, bottle of broken quills and wrong feather heavy in her lap. Dominic’s presence pressed warm at her side—quiet, steady, like a hinge that had sworn never to come loose. She should have been asleep. Her bones begged for it. Instead, her mind replayed the duel in endless loops: the neatness of the Reviser’s strokes, the cage of Margin, the way Er
