A firm, measured knock hit the study door.
Eryx. I would have known it anywhere—the controlled, deliberate raps, as if he was bracing the world for whatever he was about to say.
“Enter,” I called.
The Lord General stepped in, snow melting along the battered furs at his shoulders. He gave a stiff dip of his chin.
“Your Majesty,” he said, his tone more formal than usual. “I’ve compiled the initial reports from the attack.”
I gestured for him to proceed.
“The casualty count stands at seventeen dead, thirty-four injured. Eight more are unlikely to survive the night.” His mouth tightened.
“And morale in general?” I pressed.
“Deteriorating.”
“We have lost more soldiers in worse battles,” I began, and a muscle worked in Eryx’s jaw.
“And they are exhausted,” he replied tersely. “But it’s not just that. The Korythid is unlike anything we have fought before. Not just in size, but its behavior, too. The intelligence and spite… The intentionality. It has shaken the ranks.”
He shifted on his feet, his usually calm presence thrumming with furious energy.
“Between that and the loss of the Visionary, they are calling it an omen?—”
“We have not lost the Visionary,” I snapped, the room growing colder as ice raced out from my body to cover the floor and wall behind me.
Eryx paused, his deep blue eyes crinkling with something too understanding for my taste. A scar tugged at the corner of his mouth as if debating how to respond.
Then his careful mask slipped back into place and he squared his shoulders.
“Unless you know something I don’t, it doesn’t seem likely that she will make a recovery,” he said in a more subdued tone, though there was still an undertone I couldn’t quite read.
I ground my teeth, shoving down images of Nevara in the infirmary, unmoving. It would have been bad enough that he brought this to me only a day after the attack, that he hadn’t found a way to stave off rumors a little longer, like he usually would. But Eryx wasn’t finished yet.
“That’s not all,” he added.
“Of course it isn’t,” I growled.
He hesitated just long enough that I knew he was choosing his next words carefully. “It won’t be long before reports spread about the shadows.”
His face was carefully composed, but there was a calculating gleam in his eyes. Over the course of my lifetime, Eryx had gone from an instructor and a protector to something more familiar, but he was every inch a General now, studying me for any sign of deceit.
He had seen Everly’s power.
The temperature in the study dropped several more degrees, and ice slowly stretched from the wall up the ceiling to coat the chandelier.
“The ones that spilled across the battlefield whenshelanded,” he continued, his tone too casual for the words. “I’ve fought enough Unseelie to knowtheirmana when I see it.”
An accusation and a confirmation in one. He knew that she was Unseelie, but more than that, he knew that I knew as well. That I, too, had fought enough of them to recognize their mana, let alone realize when I had one in my bed.
My fingers drummed once against the desk—controlled, cold. “Is this a question, Lord General?”
“A concern,” he said, too mildly. “One Commander Astreval and the rest of my soldiers share. They’re wondering why the Unseelie’s shadow-mana was present so close to when a monster breached our wards for the first time in living history.”
My vision frosted and narrowed to a thin blade of ice.
“And what exactly,” I asked softly, “domysoldiers think it means?”
