Lena
It was as if the fight in the grand hall had never happened.
I tried asking Gunnar about the meeting that had held the entire palace in a suffocating, three-hour deadlock, but my questions dissolved into the cold stone walls. Three days had passed, and the silence of the Western Wing was far worse than the shouting.
By midday, the suffocating atmosphere had shifted back to an oppressive quiet. Outside my arched window, the sun baked the stone courtyard below, carrying up the distant, rhythmic thud of heavy wooden broadswords and iron shields hitting practice dummies.
Gunnar was down at the training grounds. He had been there since dawn, pushing his Vanguard soldiers through grueling, relentless drills, burning off whatever dark, erratic storm was twisting under his skin.
He had b
