POV: LucianThe assassin is held in the lower cells, the ones carved directly into the mountain's base where the stone stays cold regardless of the season. Lucian descends with Brem and two of the senior Direwolf warriors, the passage narrow enough that they move single file, the torchlight doing the kind of uneven work that makes shadows move when nothing else does.The cell is small. The wolf inside it is not what Lucian expected, though Lucian is not entirely sure what was expected. Someone older, maybe. Someone carrying more obvious threat in the frame. Instead the assassin is a young male wolf, perhaps twenty, with the lean build of someone who grew up working hard and the particular stillness of someone who has already decided how this ends and made peace with it.He does not look afraid.Lucian pulls a chair to the cell door and sits down, which is not the posture of interrogation but of conversation, and the distinction matters. Brem remains standing behind, which is the postu
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