I woke up to the sound of Mara's voice drifting up from downstairs.
"...message came through about an hour ago," she was saying. "Veyrith knows exactly what they did."
"And he's not happy about it," Henrik replied. "Seven rifts in one operation? He's definitely going to escalate."
"That's what worries me. Yesterday, there were four enforcers at the last rift, next time it could be forty."
I groaned and rolled over, finding Azryth already awake beside me, staring at the ceiling.
"How long have you been listening to them strategize our imminent doom?" I asked.
"Twenty minutes." He didn't look at me. "Mara's run through fourteen different scenarios for how Veyrith might retaliate, none of them end well."
"That's pessimistic."
"That's Mara being thorough."
"It's like she can smell fear."
"She can. It's a hunter thing."
I wasn't sure if he was joking.
I sat up carefully, every muscle in my body staging a formal protest. "Ow. Why does everything hurt?"
