Neither spoke, the words hanging between them with a strange, unplaceable weight. The wolf continued, as though the repetition of it might make it easier to understand.
"She says it over and over." A pause. "'Don't let her dream.'"
"What does that mean?" Marcus asked, and the question was not rhetorical—it was the only one available.
No one answered. Because no one yet knew. But the phrase settled into the stone around them and stayed there, resisting dismissal.
Several floors above, morning had fully established itself across the palace.
Sunlight filtered through the tall windows of the royal chamber in pale, steady bands, falling across polished floors and the quiet, ordered surfaces of a room that had not slept.
