The cold in the Silverfang courtyard was a teeth-rattling, marrow-deep entity, but the chill in Kael Draven's veins was sharper. It was the cold of calculation, of probabilities and casualty estimates, a frigid sea where the warm, anchoring pull of his mate-bond was a distant, muted star. He stood before the newcomers from the Sun-Kissed Sands, and their grace was an accusation.
Their banners, depicting a stylized sun over a river of sand, did not flap. They flowed, the fabric itself seeming to hold a captured desert heat that made the air around them waver. Ten of them. Their robes were pale, reinforced silk, their eyes a disconcerting spectrum of amber and gold, holding a stillness that felt less like peace and more like the quiet at the center of a killing drought.
