Soren's head snapped toward her, the imperial mask finally shattering. The reports of burning provinces and falling borders had been a political catastrophe, but this was a visceral, personal knife to the throat.
"Where is he?" he asked, his voice dropping an octave into a low, vibrating growl of urgency.
Caelen was already moving toward her, his hand white-knuckled on his sword hilt. "Where did you leave him, Eris? Where?" The fear of a father... even a man who lived by the blade... was a hollow, wide-eyed thing.
They were united in that single second, two men of war reduced to the same primitive, frantic terror.
"I went with Mira to check on him," Eris said, her voice shaking like a leaf in a gale. "Before the trial started." The routine of it, the mundane safety of a morning check now felt like a death sentence she had signed herself. "I told Mira to stay with him. In the east wing… the guest chambers."
