The voice from the loudspeaker did not echo through the forest and disappear. It clung to the tree trunks, to the old lines beneath the moss, and to the broken ring on Elara's wrist. Kael Blackthorn, if you want to see Darian's body, bring the vessel to the Root Facility. The sentence was not only a threat. It was a blade placed deliberately inside Kael's deepest wound.
Kael's face froze, then changed. Anger did not come immediately. First, something quieter and more dangerous passed through him. The darkness that opened in Kael's eyes at Darian's name seemed, for one instant, as if it could swallow the entire forest. Elara thought he would move, but Kael stayed where he was. This time, he was holding himself back not so he would not attack, but so he would not fall apart.
