Chapter 85: Night on the Ice
The final night before the thaw was the coldest Kael had ever known. It was a cold that lived in the silence, in the spaces between heartbeats. The warriors in their snow dens were motionless, not sleeping, but preserving the last embers of their strength. The air was so still the stars looked like chips of ice nailed to the black dome of the sky, their light brittle and unforgiving.
Kael stood his watch at the ridge, a sentinel carved from the same frozen stuff as the landscape. He was beyond fatigue, his consciousness pared down to a single, shining point of intent. The plan he and Lyra had forged—the insane, beautiful, terrifying plan—hung in his mind like a drawn blade. It required a synchronization so precise it felt like trying to thread a needle in a hurricane, blindfolded.
