The campfire burned low, a thin lick of flame licking at damp logs, throwing more smoke than heat. Kaelen sat apart from the others, staring into the curling ash as though it held answers. His armor was still scuffed from the last clash, his body bruised, but it wasn’t his wounds that pressed heavy against him. It was the silence, the silence of a company on the verge of breaking.
Behind him, voices muttered in the half-dark, pitched low but not low enough. Men who once laughed and drank together now spoke in hissing tones, their words circling like wolves.
“She’s a curse,” one said.
“No curse,” another snapped, “but worse, a spy, a blade waiting for the right throat.”
Kaelen’s jaw tightened. He didn’t need to turn to know who they meant. Serenya had settled herself at the edge of the
