The keep felt different in the hours before dawn.

It was not silence that wrapped its stone walls, but a kind of held breath, as though the very foundations of Kaelith knew the council would soon wake to blood and knives hidden in words.

Elaria watched the fire burn low from the edge of the bed. Every word of her well prepared speech was already engraved into her memory as her fingers played with the parchment she had penned the previous evening. She didn’t need the words in ink anymore. ...