The Citadel was eating itself alive.Aelara had read about revolutions in the dry, bloodless language of history books, strategic movements, shifting allegiances, the transfer of power recorded in clean sentences that stripped out all the noise and the smell and the sheer animal terror of people caught between what was and what might be.
None of those books had prepared her for this. The smoke. The screaming that came from too many directions at once. The way fire reflected in the eyes of men fighting men they'd served beside for years.
Kira's wolves moved through it like water through cracks finding gaps, widening them, steering Aelara and the twins through the chaos with a precision that spoke of long planning. Seraphine walked at her left shoulder, and twice Aelara felt that deep, tectonic power flare outward not in attack but in deflection, guards thrown aside without a hand being laid on them. A barrier that moved with them.
