Taren never refused an order, not once in all his eleven years serving the Red Matriarch. Today his sword hand heard the command, then quietly refused to lift a single trembling finger.
Seliza's whisper hung in the cold air of the ruined tea-house, soft as silk and final as a gate.
A thin red thread pulsed along her ribs under the borrowed coat, brightening whenever Lana spoke. Flint's tether, he realized, a leash made of light that never once asked her for permission.
"You heard me," Seliza said again, gently, the way she once spoke to a frightened boy in a mine camp.
His blade point rested between the baron's shoulder blades, steady as a nail in an old beam, "I will not," Taren said, lowering it a finger's width.
Three words was all he ever spent on anything, yet these were the heaviest words he owned.
"Oh dear, I was afraid you would say that," Seliza whispered, her smile cracking at one corner.
