The council chamber was empty now, the captains and advisors gone, and the torches burned low. Only Kaelen and I remained, the fragments pulsing on the table between us, the fire crackling in the hearth. The silence was heavy, thick with the weight of everything that had been said and everything that had been left unsaid.
Kaelen had not moved from his chair. His winter-gray eyes were fixed on the fragments, his jaw tight, his hands resting on the arms of his chair. He looked like a man carved from stone, immovable, unyielding.
But I knew him better than that. I could see the tension in his shoulders, the fear in his eyes, the desperate need to protect me from a danger he could not fight.
"Kaelen," I said.
He did not look at me.
"Kaelen, look at me."
Slowly, he turned. His eyes were hollow and shadowed, the eyes of a man who had seen too much, lost too much, and feared too much.
