THORNE POINT OF VIEW.

Two weeks.

Fourteen sunrises bleeding across a sky I did not recognize.

Fourteen nights staring at a wooden ceiling instead of the stone vaults of Shadowfang’s royal home.

Every dawn felt stolen.

Every breath felt borrowed.

I should have died in those woods.

The scar along my side was proof of how close I had come, jagged, thick, still tender beneath the linen bandages wrapped tightly around my ribs. The old man’s medicines had drawn out the poison, but they ...