Page 30 of Bonded By Stone & Blood

We stay there. His arm banded across my ribs. My pulse loud in my own ears. His breath warm against my temple, slower than mine, which is deeply unfair.

"You telegraphed," I manage.

"You still fell."

"I'm learning the system?—"

"You are." And the way he says it—low, close, almost amused—drains all the argument right out of me.

16

TOVIAN

The war camp has spread through the mountain woods like something that grew there. Thirty yards below the cavern mouth, between the old pines and the frost-hardened ridgeline, the Ashwing warriors have made themselves a perimeter.

Fire pits burn low between the trees. Stone-skinned bodies move through the pre-dawn dark in patrol formations — relearning the terrain, relearning their own legs after centuries of stillness. I hear them from the war tent: the heavy rhythm of wing drills above the treeline, the crack of sparring partners colliding.

They are waking up. Slowly, painfully, the way a frostbitten limb wakes — with heat and discomfort and a dull fury that has nowhere clean to go yet. I stand where the war tent opens to the grey pre-dawn and watch them and think that we are ready until Ryken lands badly.

There is blood dried black across his shoulder, his left wing dragging on the floor without grace, torn membrane dangling along the edge.

"Both passes." Ryken's voice is flat. Hollowed out. "The southern ridge and the Greymaw crossing. Sealed off. We counted at least forty Cragborn sentinels on the southern face alone, and Flora's vanguard has nested into the cliffs above Greymaw like they were born there."

Vorgrym says nothing. I feel his stillness the same way I feel the cold, spreading, settling, promising damage.

"Flora and Tharros," I say.

"Combined forces." Ryken meets my eyes.

I press both fists against the war table and let the silence hold for three full seconds. Maps and troop positions blur beneath my hands. I have planned for this possibility since the moment I sensed Tharros's signature spreading east two weeks ago. Planning for something and watching it materialize in front of you are entirely different experiences.

"Get your wounds treated," I tell Ryken.

The math is already doing itself in my head. Sealed passes means no supply lines in or out of the valley. No reinforcements. No escape routes for the human settlement below. Winter stores were already thin before the siege began. They will not last another month at current consumption.

I send for Sabine and Velka.

Velka arrives first.She takes one look at Vorgrym's expression and drops into a chair with the bone-deep exhaustion of someone who has been expecting bad news long enough that receiving it feels almost like relief.

Sabine arrives seconds behind her, still pulling her coat closed, her braid half-finished over one shoulder. She reads the room in less than a heartbeat — her eyes move to the map, to Vorgrym, to me — and she finishes braiding her hair without breaking her stride and stops beside the table.

"How bad?" she asks.

"Both mountain passes," I say. "Tharros and Flora are running a coordinated siege. Nothing moves in or out of the valley."

Velka exhales through her teeth. "How long before the village starts to feel it?"

"They already feel it." Sabine's voice is quiet, but there is an edge beneath it sharp enough to cut. "Three families in the north quarter ran out of flour four days ago. Marene's children are eating once a day."

She holds my gaze without flinching. "We distribute whatever is left in the reserves. All of it. House by house if we have to."

"That puts you in the open settlement for hours," I say. "Every day. Flora's vanguard is already inside the valley perimeter."

"Then post guards."

"Sabine—"

"I am not going to let Marene's children starve while I sit in a cave deciding how much risk is acceptable." Her voice doesn't rise. "Post guards, assign a patrol route, put Velka on my shoulder if you want. But I am going into that village."