Darren
The fight over the boy happened in the sequestered wing, behind the honor guard my own politics had posted, and it was the worst hour of a very bad day.
“No.” Gunnar filled the window of the guest chamber with his back to us, the northern sky beyond him.
“Gunnar.” Ciera’s voice was gentle and pitiless at once, a combination I had only ever heard mothers achieve. “The trail is cut. The scent is cut. The finest hunters in all the kingdoms can’t find her. We have a continent of north and nothing else. There is one compass in the world that points at that child, and he is standing in this room asking to be used.”
“He is TEN.”
“He is the only one who can feel her.”
Thorin stood between his parents in his travel clothes, packed, planted, and he did not fidget and he did not plead.
