The messenger did not arrive through the main gate.
That would have been too polite.
Too formal.
Enemies did not request entry when fracture had already opened a door.
Luca saw him first from the lower patrol path — a dark silhouette standing just beyond the second perimeter marker where estate law ended and treaty obligation began.
Unarmed.
Unescorted.
Unwelcome.
Ugh.
The wind carried his scent in short, deliberate bursts.
Not fear.
Not urgency.
Confidence.
The kind that only came from knowing you would not be attacked.
Not yet.
"Don't," Luca said quietly when one of the younger guards shifted forward.
"He's alone."
"That doesn't make him harmless."
It made him deliberate.
The battlefield memory arrived uninvited.
Rain turning the slope beneath their boots into mud.
Shouts swallowed by cannon thunder.
An outsider mate dragged screaming from the ridge line because instinct had been trusted—
And precedent ignored.
Half the eastern patrol buried by dawn.
