The words on the border patrol report blurred and swam before Thorne's eyes, transforming from "unusual tracks" and "possible incursion" into meaningless black scribbles. The parchment might as well have been blank. His study, usually a sanctuary of order and control, felt stifling, the walls leaning in, the fire too hot.
All he could see, burned onto the back of his eyelids, was a pair of wide, silver-grey eyes. They were the colour of a winter storm at dawn, and in their depths swirled a pain so profound, so achingly familiar, it seemed to echo the hollow, frozen cavern his own heart had become. It was the look of someone who had lost everything and was braced to lose it all over again.
He slammed the parchment down on his desk, the sound cracking through the room like ice on a lake. "Ryder."
His captain, who had been meticulously and obviously pretending to examine a detailed map of the Southern Frostspine passes, looked up without a hint of surprise. "Sire?"
