Dawn came thin and cold over Grimridge, drawing every rail, roofline, and stone edge into a harder shape than the dark had allowed and leaving the whole pack house exposed to the kind of morning that gave nothing softness for free. Sable had been awake before the light reached the shutters. Sleep had come in shallow pieces through the night, never deep enough to quiet the drag in her back or the heavier, slower awareness of the child beneath her hand, and when she finally sat up on the cot in the great hall she felt the cost of the last days in every movement. Cassian was still in the chair beside her, one forearm across his knee, his body at rest only in the narrow technical sense that he was not presently striking anyone. He looked up the moment she moved and came to her before the sharper pull through her side had fully settled.
"You stay in the hall for this," he said, his voice low enough that it belonged to the space between them and not the room at large.
