The descent into Meridian should've felt like relief—warm stone after days of ice, city lights after mountain silence—but it didn't. It felt like walking into a room where someone had already decided the ending and was just waiting for the actors to arrive.
Soren knew they were being watched long before he saw the watchers. The lower districts were thick with festival banners: blue and white draped from balconies, silver strips woven through iron lampposts. The streets were loud, crowded, and somehow brittle, every voice pitched wrong, every glance lingering too long. Word of the ridge fight had preceded them; Soren felt it in the weight of eyes tracking the Lady's coat, the guards' muted reactions, the whispers that stopped just as he turned to look.
Mira walked beside him, hood half-drawn, the injured hand buried in her coat. She hadn't complained once since the bridge. She didn't need to—the swelling spoke for her.
Valenna murmured corrections under his skin as he moved.
