Nobody slept that night, and by the time the sky had gone from black to the bruised grey that passed for dawn over the domain, the crown-shape overhead hadn't faded so much as settled, the way the mark on the Spire stone had settled two nights before it started this. I'd expected it to vanish with the sun. It didn't. It simply grew harder to see against the daylight, which somehow felt worse than if it had stayed bold and visible, because it meant the thing wasn't performing for us. It was just there now, the way a scar is just there.
I found Vesha and Algor in the east archive before I'd finished my second cup of the bitter root tea Nana insisted helped with clarity and which I was fairly sure did nothing but keep a person's hands occupied. They'd taken over the long table entirely, Vesha's ledgers stacked in a precise fortification around a growing pile of Algor's own notes, which had no order to them whatsoever and seemed to be multiplying regardless.
