LYSSARA
The first morning after the declaration was an ordinary morning, and this was the most extraordinary thing about it.
The tree line was the same tree line. The cold was the same cold. Ashfen was conducting itself with the specific competence of a territory that had been doing this long enough to be good at it. The wolf world had changed overnight. The morning had not been noticed. And the morning's not noticing was the most honest possible confirmation that what had changed was real, because things that were only performed required the morning to notice them, and things that were genuinely true did not.
Thalric was in the kitchen when I came downstairs. Not in the study but on the terrace. In the kitchen, which was where the pack house's ordinary life happened before the formal
