It came at dawn.
One sound. Deep and resonant and final in the way that only things struck once could be final, rolling across the kingdom of Arameor like a stone dropped into still water, finding every wall and every window and every sleeping body and waking them not with urgency but with the specific dread of a sound everyone had been waiting for and nobody had been ready for anyway.
The holy war had announced itself.
And for a long moment, nobody moved.
•••
Elara felt him pull her closer before she was fully awake.
Not urgently. Not desperately. Just tighter, the way you held something when the world outside the bed had just become considerably more dangerous than the world inside it. His arm around her waist drew her back against his chest and she let him and she put her hand over his and they lay like that in the grey morning light listening to the gong finish saying what it had to say.
Neither of them spoke.
