The mountain air changed three miles before the border did.
Aurora noticed it the way she noticed everything about Silverpeak now — not as a native returning home, but as someone reading a report written in weather and stone. The cold here had a particular texture, dry and clean, cut through with the mineral sharpness that came off the high passes. She'd grown up inside that texture without ever once thinking of it as data.
She thought of it as data now. Twelve days into the assignment, she'd stopped apologizing to herself for that.
"Your Highness." Captain Reiner fell in beside her horse as the party crested the last ridge before the capital came into view, white towers rising out of permanent snowline, the palace built into the mountain itself rather than merely against it. "Your father's expecting you within the hour. He's cleared the war room."
"The war room. Not the receiving hall."
"He said you'd prefer it."
