The morning's light only just penetrated the ash-laden air at the Summit of Selvarin. Every tree, every rock appeared blackened by the famed sadness of Mara's sacrifice. Those wards we'd relaid flickered like injured fireflies, barely clinging to the spark of life. Our line had held—just barely—but the relentless tide of revenants and ghostly hounds weighed us down like a tempest.
I stood over Kael and the ruined battlefield, breath rasping in my chest, eyes watering with unshed tears. Kael went to his knees in front of the impromptu ward, hand upon his side where a fresh scar was still sore. Every heartbeat was a pledge: that he lived, that we could go on — but also an admonition of his incompleteness.
His storm-gray eyes met mine, and something alive pulsed within them that I'd only seen once before—when he charged the Wolf King in The Fight. Now that fire blazed brighter — but darker.
