Allissa

They convened the war council before midday because I would not wait, and I walked into it knowing the room wanted blood and had already chosen whose.

The chamber held every banner of the alliance and every ruler still under our roof, arrayed down the long table in the order the steward’s seating charts had agonized over for a celebration. Now the same chairs held a tribunal. I had not slept, and it showed; grief sat on me like a second skin and I had stopped trying to hide it. I had ...