Lyle
Dayanara and Gunnar had been gone longer than anybody had said out loud the night they left. My mate has never once in her life come home early just to ease a man’s chest. But the sky over the southern hills stayed empty morning after morning, and I was getting anxious.
I was waiting and guarding the castle. I just didn’t know what I was guarding it from.
The children stayed in the heart of the castle, in the warded room with no windows and one door, where the walls hummed with everything my mate layered into them before she flew. We made it a world instead of a shelter, because children can smell the difference. Evette read to them in the mornings and Hessa kept the meals coming. The room that the crown keeps for its worst hour was filled up with blocks and blankets and children’s
