KAELRITH
The ride back from Ashfen took four hours.
Four hours of northern terrain that worsened in the specific way northern terrain worsened when the season was turning, and the ground had not yet decided between frozen and thawed, and punished everything that moved across it for the indecision. My wolves rode without complaint. They had learned across four months of these rides that the return journey required a particular quality of silence, and they gave it without being asked.
I gave them nothing to read in my face.
Not because there was nothing there. Because what was there belonged to a low table in a meeting room in Ashfen, and I was not going to carry it across four hours of terrain and deposit it somewhere it did not belong.
I had left something in that room.
Not Zirelle.
