Page 2 of Raven’s Fight

“And Charron is covering your morning.”

“Yes.”

I take a slow sip of tea. “Hemlocke.”

“Raven.”

“Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

The corner of his mouth moves, just barely. “She turns eighteen in three months.”

“I’m aware.”

“He’s been respectful.”

“I know. I’ve been watching.” I set the mug down and meet his eyes. The magenta of his irises catches the torchlight in that faint otherworldly way they have, his unicorn nature just beneath the surface. “Leander is going to need time to adjust to the idea.”

“I know that too.”

We look at each other for a moment — the particular communication of two people who’ve shared space and trust long enough that most things don’t require full sentences. Then Hemlocke picks up his foaling report and I unfold the patrol map and we work through the morning briefing in companionable quiet, the way we do most mornings now.

There are fourteen items on the list by the time Keir blinks in at second bell, still carrying the cold of the outside on his skin, his dark hair wind-messed and his eyes bright with the energy he only gets after a long patrol. He drops into the chair beside me and immediately steals the rest of my tea.

“Western report,” he says. “Same rotation as last week. Eight signatures, four-drake shifts. No change in pattern.”

“Still no breach?”

“No breach. But the rotation speed changed. They’re moving faster between positions, less time standing.” He sets the mug down and his expression sharpens into something more serious. “Someone is telling them to stay mobile.”

Someone who understands that stationary watchers are easier to track and eliminate. Someone thinking several moves ahead.

“They know we’re watching the line,” I say.

“Or they assumed we would be.” Keir’s jaw tightens fractionally. “Which is a different problem.”

It is. Assuming surveillance means operating at a level of tactical intelligence I haven’t fully accounted for in my threat assessment. These aren’t opportunists circling Blackhaven hoping for a soft spot in the border — these are soldiers following orders from someone patient enough to run a watching rotation for months without pressing an advantage.

I fold the patrol map slowly, filing the information into the shape I’ve been building since Finlay’s letter arrived. Magnus’s timeline, the supply lines, the western fire drakes, Amadeus’s name sitting at the center of all of it like a stone dropped in still water, the ripples still spreading.

“Increase patrol frequency on the western line,” I say. “Two-blink check-ins instead of three. And I want a scent sample from a new position, farther east than we’ve tried. See if the rotation extends past our markers.”

Keir nods, already running the logistics through his head — not just the speed and range of his shifting, but the geometry of who can be where and when.

My phone buzzes on the table. I glance at the screen.

Leaving at dawn. Be with you by midday. — M

My mother. I set the phone face-down on the table and look at the patrol map again. Three days ago I sent her a detailed message outlining the Eastern Isles mission — what we were looking for, what Queen Giselle’s position was likely to be based on Xero’s recon, and what I specifically needed from her that I couldn’t provide for myself. The political weight of the Marzana Empire’s reigning queen standing beside her daughter in a foreign ruler’s hall. The kind of weight that doesn’t translate through letters or emissaries. She responded in four words: I’ll be there. Obviously.

Good.

Nova wakes up angry. This is not unusual — my daughter came into the world with opinions and has been refining them ever since. This morning the grievance appears to be her sleeping blanket, which has twisted itself around her wings during the night and is now an obstacle requiring immediate destruction.

I hear her from the corridor before I reach the door, not crying because Nova rarely cries, but making the specific low rumble she uses when she has encountered something she finds personally insulting. I push the door open and find her sitting in the center of her nest in human form, the blanket wound around both wings like a particularly aggressive vine, her small face set in an expression of profound offense.

“Good morning,” I say.

She looks up at me with those mismatched eyes — amber, both of them, except for the half-sapphire that splits her left iris like a crack of sky through autumn stone — and holds up the blanket. “Stuck,” she informs me.