Someone had been on the balcony, and they had wanted him to know it.
That was the conclusion Dex arrived at after twenty minutes of standing in the dark with every window locked and every door bolted and his wolf snarling so loud behind his ribs it was hard to think past the noise.
The sound had been deliberate. Boots on stone, just long enough to register, not long enough to trace. And the scent, foreign, wrong, threaded through the cold air for exactly one breath before it was pulled away like bait on a line.
Aegon:That was not an accident.
Dexmon:No.
Aegon:Whoever it was, they know this keep. They know our hearing. They left just enough for us to catch and nothing for us to follow.
Dex said nothing. He crawled back into bed and pulled Serena against his chest and pressed his face into her hair and lay there, awake, for a very long time, turning over the same thought until it wore a groove in him.
