(Kaelen)
She came back on a Tuesday.
I know it was a Tuesday because I'd been in the middle of a supply review with Theron, the kind of tedious necessary work that exists specifically to make you feel like you're doing something useful when nothing urgent is happening, and Maren had knocked on the war room door and said, simply, "You need to come outside."
Maren didn't say *you need to come outside* unless the thing outside was worth interrupting whatever was inside. So I came.
Lara was at the gate.
Not standing at it — at it, against it, one hand braced on the stone post like she'd been using it to hold herself up and had been doing so for a while. She was alone. No horse, which meant she'd walked the last stretch, or been carried by someone who'd dropped her at our border and left,
