I felt her absence before the sun rose.

Daisy had vanished with the dawn, her scent faded from the keep’s western corridor. The pendant—the one carrying my mother’s final message—lay untouched by our shared bedside.

I knew something was wrong. I felt it in my bones.

I felt it in my blood. In the way the bond between us thinned, wavered, as if a blade hovered at its throat. For hours, I scoured the grounds, questioned guards, even summoned Kalen from the northern watch. I was that ...