I look at Colsar. "I can do two days."
He studies me for a moment and then nods once.
Wyn steps forward. "If you are ready, Majesty, the healer is prepared."
I nod, because there is no other choice.
Around us the soldiers rise as one, orders moving through the clearing, and within minutes everything that has been still begins to move, and we prepare to leave the snow behind.
They do not rush me, which surprises me more than anything. For all the movement around us, for the urgency that has taken hold of the clearing, no one reaches for me without pause. The soldiers hold their distance, their attention fixed but restrained, waiting rather than acting.
Colsar does not wait. He steps in close, his hand firm at my back, and when I move it is because he guides me forward.
The transport is closer than it looked, and stronger. I feel it before I reach it, something low and constant beneath thefabric, a contained power that hums against my skin as though the structure itself is alive and holding. The movement getting inside is what costs me, the shift, the moment my body changes position and everything pulls at once, deep and immediate, the wound across my abdomen tightening beneath the bandages. I draw in a slow breath and let it out just as slowly and force my body to follow. Once I am upright and holding there the pain changes, moves deeper, becomes something I can sit inside rather than fight.
He feels it and adjusts without being told.
Inside the air is warmer and dimmer, layered in thick cloth and furs built to absorb the force of movement before it reaches whoever rests within. Saurin follows us in with the children held close, already wrapped against the cold, and passes them to Colsar one at a time. He places them beside me with a focus so complete that nothing else seems to exist while he does it, adjusting the blankets, making certain they are secure before he allows himself to look anywhere else.
Then he looks at me. "You should rest."
"I will," I say, and do not close my eyes.
Footsteps approach from outside and Trophi appears at the opening, one hand braced against the frame. His attention moves from Colsar to me to the children and back.
"We move now," he says.
Colsar's gaze does not leave him. "The undead are not done. They will come.”
“They will not follow you through this.” Trophi presses his hand lightly against the frame. “It is heavily warded, and you will notbe moving alone. You have seen our numbers. The front line will clear everything ahead of you, and the rest will move with you, holding the perimeter the entire way.” A brief pause. “They avoid us in numbers like this.”
No explanation in it. Only certainty.
Colsar studies him for a moment and then nods once.
Trophi inclines his head and steps back, and a woman slips inside before the opening fully closes. No armor, no insignia, only a small satchel at her side and hands that move with quiet certainty.
"The healer," Colsar says.
She nods and comes to me without hesitation, her fingers pressing lightly along the bandaging at my abdomen, then higher, then at my wrist, measuring something I cannot see.
"You have lost a great deal of blood," she says, her voice low and even. "The wound is holding, but not strongly."
She opens her satchel and withdraws a small vial. "Drink."
I do. The taste is unfamiliar, something that spreads warmth through my chest and out into my limbs, steadying where everything has felt too thin. Her hands move again over the bandages, a faint heat following her touch, not enough to heal but enough to hold.
"This will keep you stable," she says.
"For two days?" Colsar asks.
She looks at him. "For as long as it needs to."
Then she steps back and is gone as quietly as she came.
Colsar does not move immediately. His head lifts toward the sky and something shifts in him that I feel before I understand it, the air pulling tight in a way that has nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with what he has become. His blue eye changes first, the color deepening and then burning through into copper, bright and unnatural. His gray eye remains the same. The faint glyphs along his arms, neck, and jaw begin to glow.
The sky answers.
