Cessy watched the campfires from the eastern ridge while Lucan lounged against a standing rock, his signet tucked beneath cloth. Far below, someone hauled a kettle past the covered wounded while the damaged nursery's ragged current seeped into the stone.
The company survived, but she hated how close the vessel came to joining its dead.
"Three doses before the larvae finished changing," Lucan drawled, tapping the signet against the stone.
"You knew exactly what marrow does to an unfinished shell, and now the imperial party gets a whole crater full of evidence."
She tugged her cloak clear of the rock, watching current shudder through the ward lines beneath his lazy hand.
The dead heart gave no answer down there, and the nursery's outer ward fluttered beside the canyon's sealed sector.
