Kael had not set foot in the Ashlands since the night they exiled him, and the wind still tasted the same—ash and salt, and something underneath that he had never named.

The envoy waited at the tree line, exactly where the old maps said the border used to be. She did not kneel. He had not expected her to.

“The Ashbound don't send envoys,” Kael said. “They send corpses back and call it a message.”

“Then be glad I'm neither,” she said, and unrolled the seal his own father had broken. “The court needs the prince they threw away. Whatever's left of him.”

Kael looked past her, to the ridge where the fires still burned low against the dark, and said nothing for a long moment.