The city hummed with a tension Emery could feel deep within her bones.
She walked through the streets as evening descended, passing warriors sharpening their blades upon whetstones, passing fletchers binding feathers to arrows, passing healers sorting their herbs with grim, tireless care. Everyone was preparing. Everyone was waiting. Tomorrow the army would march. Tomorrow, everything might change.
She tried to help where she could. She held a child while its mother fastened on armor, carried water to the guards along the wall, and sat beside an elderly woman who wept quietly because her son had insisted on fighting.
Yet her thoughts were not truly here.
Her mind lingered in their chamber, where Zekar was most likely still bent over maps, measuring odds and bearing burdens she could not ease.
She found him exactly so.
