The cavern smelled of iron and smoke, of sweat and sorrow.
The echoes of battle still clung to the stone walls. Torches guttered low, their flames struggling against the lingering darkness that seemed thicker now, as though the assassins had left a stain no fire could burn away.
The rebels moved slowly, silently. They bound the wounds of the living, their hands trembling from exhaustion. They gathered the bodies of the fallen, laying them side by side.
Cael stood among them, his shirt torn and soaked with blood, his ribs bound hastily with strips of cloth. Pain flared with every breath, but he refused to sit, refused to show weakness. His eyes never left the dead.
There were nine.
Nine men and women who had sworn to follow him into fire, who had believed in the Ashen Stag—and had paid
