Her husband had lived a significant portion of his life in that room. It was hard not to feel uncomfortable here. It reminded her how much of his life she had not been present to share. He hadn’t stayed at the steadholt long, after she had come into his life.

She walked around the room, slowly. It was spacious enough, she supposed, for a small family, if they didn’t mind being close, though not nearly as large as the chambers they shared at Garrison. She tried to imagine the large fireplace in one wall, shedding the only light on a quiet winter evening, children sleeping on little mattresses in front of it, their cheeks rosy with—

Amara shook the thought away. She would never give him children, no matter how much she might wish it or fantasize about it. And in any case, the entire exercise was ridiculous. There were more important things she should be focusing on.

The vord had been driven away, and they had not reappeared in the hours of the afternoon, but they would surely not absent themselves for long. The evacuation of the easternmost half of the Valley, moving everyone behind the last redoubt at Garrison, was not yet completed. The vord would surely not wait much longer—which was why she had come to this chamber, to attempt to get some sleep in the time available to her before the enemy arrived. She hadn’t slept in days.

Amara sighed and slipped out of her armored coat. If only the Elder Frederic, now the acting Steadholder, hadn’t been the steadholt’s gargant master. The great beasts were of unsurpassed utility on a steadholt, but they stank—not unpleasantly, but enormously. They smelled very, very large. It was not the sort of addition to the décor one could readily ignore.

Unless you worked with gargants every day, she supposed.

On the other hand, Amara was exhausted. She dropped her weapons and armor next to the large simple bed and cast herself down upon it with a groan. A genuine mattress, by the furies. She hadn’t slept on anything but a bedroll or the cold ground since the fighting had resumed. But even so, she just couldn’t shake her sense of discomfort. It had, in fact, progressed to a sense of absolute unease.

Amara sat up, lifted her boot to the bed, and bent over it to unlace it. She seized the handle of the knife concealed there and called upon Cirrus to lend her arm speed as she threw it at the empty space next to the gaping fireplace, not six feet in front of her.

The dagger flickered through the air with a hissing hum, and steel met steel in a sharp chime and a shower of green sparks.