The morning sun cut through the canvas in stripes that crawled across her cot like accusing fingers. She had counted the water stains on the ceiling seventeen times. She’d named them. She had attempted to teach Queen Dottie, Stella’s doll, how to speak Mother Tongue, but she was a terrible student. Kept throwing herself off…

Dionys didn’t put Alessia down. He didn’t look at Nomaros. He nodded at Odrian, a single jerk of his chin that said I’ve got her and I’ll kill anyone who follows in the same motion. She was lighter than she should have been. Lighter than his shield, lighter than his armor, trembling harder than a…

The morning light didn’t warm; it simply exposed. Alessia had been braiding Stella’s hair when the tent flap opened with a sound like bone breaking. Not the familiar scuff of Odrian’s boots, not Dionys’s heavy tread. A silhouette filled the entrance, backlit by the harsh white sun, features erased by shadow. “The Council requires your…

Dionys sat on the shoreline, watching the waves of the Myrian ebb and flow. He didn’t turn when Odrian’s sandals scuffed the sand behind him. Dionys kept his gaze on the sea, even as his shoulders lost the slightest edge of tension. Enough to betray that he knew exactly who was approaching. Odrian flopped down…

Dawn arrived softly. The camp stirred, the usual clamor of soldiers rising from their bedrolls, their armor clanking, voices spilling into the morning air. But within their tent, for now, there was quiet. Alessia slept, her breathing steady, fever chased into memory. Dionys remained at her back, stoic as ever, his fingers tracing idle patterns…

Dionys pressed the cool cloth to Alessia’s forehead again and fixed her with a flat stare that was more exhausted than angry. “When a man holds a woman through a fever, he expects gratitude,” he rumbled, voice scraped raw from disuse. “Maybe tears. A whispered thank you, perhaps.” He shifted the waterskin from his belt…