The command pavilion smelled like cold iron and bad sleep.
Aiden sat at the head of the long table with his white hair unwashed, his golden eyes carrying the particular flatness of a man who had spent the night being taken apart from the inside. The bond rebound didn't kill you cleanly. It just made you wish it would.
Every hour since midnight had been a slow grinding of fractures reopening along nerves that didn't have names, and now he was supposed to run a war council.
The Empress sat beside him. Close. Chair dragged until her thigh pressed against his, her arm resting along the back of his seat. Her thumb moved in slow circles over the fabric at his forearm, tracing where she knew the fracture lines ran. She didn't hide it. That was the point.
Twelve senior officers. Eight noble representatives. Four faction captains who hated each other. And every single one of them watching his face for signs of how badly the night had broken him.
