The Seat did not sleep.
That was the first thing that made the night inside it feel wrong. The living scar kept a slow pulse under my back, in time with the bound physique, and every few breaths the silver veins in the floor brightened as if the Wound were turning a page. No one else could hear it the way I could. They felt the pressure. I felt the reading.
Elizabeth stayed awake longer than the others. Her eyes had gone silver again, the red burned out after the walk to the hollow. She sat with her knees drawn up, watching the pale figures at the edge of the light. They had not risen. They also had not left.
"It is going through us," she said quietly. "Not you first. Us."
She was right.
