The second pack did not howl.

It remembered.

Every wolf-shaped absence that rose from the stones carried a mercy Zelda had once been shown or had once given and then outlived. The warrior she had spared in the southern training grounds. The rogue she had allowed to run instead of finishing. The young sentry who had looked the other way when she first returned from death and needed time to gather her power. Even the small, private kindnesses—Kael choosing not to report her suspicious questions in the early days, Thorne pretending not to notice the way she avoided certain foods after the wolfbane revelation—now stood in the throne room as...