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"Yes."

She had known it was coming. The wards encircled everything, that was what nobody in Alarna's court fully understood. They were not a wall facing one direction. They were a perimeter. And when a perimeter weakened it weakened on every side simultaneously.

"She was supposed to seal them," Nyara said.

He said nothing.

"That was the plan." She looked at her hands. "Not my plan exactly. I did not know the details. I only knew that Eravic was getting the Arrolyn to her and that once she had it and was strong enough to wield it she could seal the wards properly. Permanently." She paused. "And before she did I was going to go through."

"Home," Eskarin said.

"Home," she said. "Yes."

He was quiet. He understood what she meant without her explaining it further because he had come to Alarna for the same reason and had been waiting for the same window and was now sitting beside her on the same steps watching the same window close.

"She did not know about Teorin," Nyara continued. "I did not know about Teorin. None of us knew that the protectorate would ever actually find her or that it was Teorin at all."

"Was it Teorin that killed her?" Eskarin's voice was quiet.

"I do not know," Nyara said. She exhaled. "And now the wards are failing on every side and creatures are coming through that nobody here can identify and the one person who could have fixed all of it is dead."

"Or not," Eskarin said carefully.

She looked at him.

He looked at the city. "I am not saying she is alive. I am saying that a woman who survived everything she survived does not simply die at a dinner table and I have learned not to accept the first version of a story I am given."

She looked at the water.

"Junis will take it hard," she said. "He liked her. More than he let on." A pause. "He likes most people more than he lets on. It is his weakness."

"Is Junis aligned?" Eskarin said.

She looked at him. "No."

"But he must remain unharmed."

"Yes." She said it without hesitation. "He must remain unharmed."

"He is loyal to Vaelor regardless of what comes."

She sighed. "No matter what. Yes."

He looked at her. "You sound as though you are not loyal to Vaelor."

"I am loyal to Sarenal," she said. "But that is not the same thing."

He nodded once.

She looked at the city one more time. The market was fully open now, vendors calling out, the ordinary machinery of Alarna turning over without her. She had come here to go home. She had waited and performed and watched and waited and now the thing she had been waiting for had died at a dinner table in Veynar and the wards were failing on every side and she was still here.

"I need to get word to Junis another way," she said. "Land routes.”

"I have them," Eskarin said. "Slower. He may already be in Veynar by the time it arrives."

"Send it anyway," she said. "Whatever he finds when he gets there, I want him to know someone is looking from this side."

She sighed. “And I will write another letter to send by sea again, just in case.”