Lena's POV
She arrived at the war room door twenty minutes later, and I understood, the moment I saw her, that whatever composure she had once carried through every room she entered had finally, entirely, given way.
Her hair was not braided with its usual military precision. It had come loose in places, strands of pale gold clinging to a face that had gone thin and pale in the weeks since I had last seen her in the corridor near the library. Her clothing, once chosen with the ease of someone who never had to think about what suited her, hung slightly wrong on a frame that looked as if it had not been eating regularly. She stopped in the doorway when she saw the full council assembled, Rourke, Bastian, Damien at the head of the table, myself seated where I had come to sit in every meeting
