(Damien POV)
The bailey was full for the first time since the fracture began.
Not packed with bodies bleeding out on stone. Not echoing with howls of challenge or the crack of shadow-magic tearing flesh. Full of living faces — hundreds of them — wolves and humans alike, loyalists who had never wavered, remnants of Darius's forces who had laid down weapons the night he walked away, even a handful of villagers who had crept up from the lower town when word spread that the demon king was dead.
Moonlight poured over the open space like spilled silver. Torches burned at regular intervals along the walls, but no one needed them tonight; the sky was clear, stars sharp as knife-points. A low wind moved through the crowd, carrying the scent of pine from the forest beyond the gates and the faint salt of the eastern sea miles away.
