The road to the Citadel was two days long and felt like a week.
Not because anything was wrong with it. The weather was fine, the pace was steady, the guard unit Vaelor had brought moved with the kind of quiet efficiency that made travel easy. It was just that two days felt long when you knew what was waiting at the end of them. When the thing on the other side of the road had a name and the name was not comfortable.
Aelara had been on harder roads. She told herself that regularly.
She told herself that and looked at her children and thought: but not with this much to lose.
Lyra was riding ahead.
Not far, not out of sight, just a little ahead of the group the way she sometimes did when she needed space to think. Aelara had learned to read that. With Caelum, needing space looked like going quiet inside a conversation, still present, still tracking everything, just pulling his attention inward.
With Lyra it looked like distance.
