By morning, the whispers had teeth.
I heard them in the walls.
In the way footsteps faltered outside Kael’s wing, in the way conversations dropped into hurried silence the second a guard rounded a corner. The keep felt like a beast chewing on its own bones—restless, starving, ready to bite whatever was closest.
This time, that was me.
Rowan’s report came early.
“They’re refusing joint patrols now,” he said, standing at the edge of Kael’s war table. “Loyalists on one side, dissenters on the other. The ones who watched Faye raise a wall in the ravine think she’s our miracle. The ones who watched her almost call down something worse… want her gone.”
“Gone where?” Kael asked, voice flat. “Buried? Traded? Exiled? Choose your poison, Rowan.”
“They haven’t yet,” Rowan said. “That’s what sc
