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“Lowtown received the last medicine wagon yesterday,” he says. “The covered wood stores are full. We have grain enough for winter, even if the pass closes for six weeks.”

“I have seen the reports.”

“I thought you might prefer hearing it from someone who counted the sacks.”

“I do.”

Bran’s weathered features soften.

“Then Lowtown will survive the winter, my Lord.”

The words settle inside me.

Months ago, I valued Vesper’s Peak as a strategic pass whose workers produced tithes. The calculation was accurate and insufficient.

I look beyond the terrace wall. Lowtown rests beneath the stronghold, small against the vast white mountain. Sunlight catches the clinic windows. Figures move between the communal well and the new wood sheds. Children drag a narrow sled through the snow while an adult follows with two buckets.

Fiona stands beside me.

She has changed the kitchens, servants’ passages, council chamber, and ancestral library. She filled a dead solarium with living green and made my soldiers recognize human authority.

She has changed me more thoroughly than any of it.

Chaos magic still moves beneath my skin. The necromantic scar remains along my body, quiet this morning but not gone. Fiona’s remedy purged the numiscu. It did not cure the older affliction, and neither of us insults her craft by pretending otherwise.

The curse belongs to another struggle.

It does not diminish what we possess.

I turn toward her.

“Fiona.”

She studies my face. “That tone means you have decided something.”

“You issued a charter that will offend half the Ridge.”

“After consulting you.”

Bran conceals a laugh. Sarveth directs the witnesses inside with the registry.

Joran follows last. He closes the terrace doors, leaving Fiona and me beneath the widening sky.

The wind catches her mantle. I secure the clasp before it can pull loose.

Her pale blue eyes remain on mine. Freckles cross her nose, touched gold by the rising sun.

“What have you decided?” she asks.

I look at the ring.

My ancestors wore it as proof that Morwen’thir authority descended through Khuzuth blood. I use it to open the library, command the wards, and seal contracts.

Fiona needs no ornament to prove what she has earned.

That is precisely why I want her to hold it.

I draw the ring from my finger.