Flare (1)

Amara paced back and forth in her room. Across the room, Analeis stood silently with her hands clasped behind her back.

As a maid, she should have offered words of comfort in that instance. But as a warrior, she wasn't trained to comfort others. So she said nothing. Yet she knew why Amara was so restless.

Unlike what Aaran believed, the temple did not stop after attacking him once. Only now, they were more subtle, more careful. In the last five years, Amara and Analeis had protected him from sixteen assassination attempts.

Assassins, spies, even poison plots—they had stopped them all without ever letting Aaran know. They never told him about it to preserve what little normalcy he had in his life.

But now, they weren't there to protect him, and Amara was restless. Her instincts screamed at her that something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

While she was worried about her son, the ground shook.