Amalia rose before the sun, unease already threading her breath.
She rarely went into the central city anymore. The streets carried too many ghosts—corners where laughter should have lived, paths she and Roland had once planned to walk together. But today, she followed Dorian, and everything changed.
Perhaps, she thought, the boy was Roland’s last gift to her.
Dorian moved ahead through the sleeping city, silent and alert. He didn’t walk like a youth. He walked like someone trained to survive loss—shoulders squared, gaze constantly scanning, attention divided between rooftops and shadows.
“Left,” he murmured once, barely turning his head.
Amalia followed without question.
His mother had died in the Queen’s doomed humanitarian mission—slain alongside others who believed mercy could so
