Arielle's POV
We stayed at the Silvercrest border for three days.
It was not what I had expected. I had expected the continuous violent intensity of the first engagement. What I got instead was something more exhausting and more complicated, long hours of watchful waiting punctuated by sharp brutal moments of fighting, and then more waiting, and the particular grinding quality of being in a place where the threat was constant but the timing was unpredictable.
I learned things about Lucien in those three days that I had not learned in months at the compound.
I learned that he slept less than anyone else and worried about it the least. Three hours in the pre-dawn quiet, sitting up rather than lying down, back against a tree with his eyes closed and his awareness clearly still partially r
