Marcus stood in the center of the ruined square, and for the first time since stepping into it, the weight of the moment settled fully into him. Not as strategy. Not as calculation. As consequence.
It sat on him like ash—fine, suffocating, impossible to brush away.
---
Around them, the Silver Ridge wolves remained exactly where they had been placed: on rooftops, along broken walls, at the mouths of every street feeding the square. Their stillness had not changed.
And that was what made it worse.
Because stillness, in something built for violence, is never passive. It is held. It is chosen. And it can end at any moment. No one in that square doubted how close they stood to blood. The truce had not held because diplomacy had worked. It held because Thessian had not yet chosen to break it. And that distinction sat in every breath drawn, every heartbeat counted.
