LYSSARA
I did not sleep after seeing Dravenor at the tree line, and I did not pretend to sleep either because pretending required energy I did not currently have, and there was no audience left to perform for anyway.
Not because I was afraid, though fear was present in the specific low-frequency way it had been present since Zykran delivered his intelligence about the eastern territories. I did not sleep because something in the quality of Ashfen's silence after I stepped back from the window told me that whatever had been standing at the edge of the trees had not left and had simply stopped allowing itself to be seen, and a threat that chose visibility on its own terms was considerably more complicated than one that simply arrived.
I lay in the dark with Zirelle warm against my side an
