Morning came grey and thick, the snow falling in fat silent flakes that clung to the windows and blurred the world beyond the glass. Aldric had not slept. He had sat in the blackwood chair for hours, the ledger open on his desk, the list of names burning in his mind like brands pressed into flesh.
The fire had died completely. The cold pressed against him from all sides, seeping through his coat and his shirt and his skin until his bones ached with it. His fingers were stiff, the quill fallen from his hand hours ago, a dark blot spreading across the ledger like a bruise that would not heal.
He needed to move, to speak, to do something other than sit in this chair and erase people's lives with a stroke of ink.
The door opened.
Caelus stood in the doorway with the beast on his shoulder, its ember eyes glowing in the grey morning light. His brother's face was unreadable, carved from the same cold stone their father had favored, but his hands were empty.
