With practiced timing, the soldiers stood straighter, stared rigidly forward, and brought their right fist over their heart. Both soldiers wore black-lacquered ceremonial armor, and one of them had bandages around his neck.
Even without those distinguishing features, Hilde would have recognized them as soldiers belonging to her brother's Guard.
Or rather, they used to.
Neither eased their stance until Hilde was before them and had given her nod. She would have walked right past, but something caught her notice.
It was the glint of reflected sunlight on the injured soldier's tear-filled eyes.
She stopped in her tracks, jolted out of her own anguish that had been exponentially increasing the closer the rectangular and doorless entrance of the House loomed. As she watched, those tears o
