She did not sleep that night.
The chamber provided shelter the way ancient things sometimes do, not deliberately, not with warmth or welcome, but simply because its walls were thick enough to stop the mountain wind and its floor, covered in the settled fragments, was surprisingly still. Alaric had found a dry corner near the wall and sat with his back against the stone, one knee raised, arm resting on it, watching the entrance with the practiced vigilance of someone who had been trained to treat every unfamiliar space as a potential ambush site.
Elowen sat near the altar with her legs crossed and her hands open in her lap.
She was listening.
Not to the chamber or the wind or the sounds of whatever moved in the valley outside. She was listening inward, the way she had learned to in the
