Ashe was still running the stillness drill when the sky began to lighten.
It was the seventh morning in a row.
For six mornings, Vane had watched the same routine from his usual careful distance. Ashe would move until her body remembered the forms without conscious effort, then stop and hold herself perfectly still. She would let the instinct to act rise, feel it, and refuse to obey it. Again. And again.
It had become almost ritualistic.
The camp slept around her. The first fires had not yet been lit. The children were still curled beneath blankets. Even the watch changes happened quietly enough that they seemed part of the darkness.
Vane had expected another morning exactly like the others.
Then Ashe stopped halfway through a movement.
She didn't lower her hands.
She didn't breathe differently.
She simply became still.
Not the practiced stillness she'd been training.
Something deeper.
