Midnight arrived over Weeping Pass not with the howling of wolves, but with a sudden, choking deadness in the wind.
The sub-zero gale that usually battered the northern castle walls died in a single breath.
Above the castle, the sky was the color of bruised pig-iron.
A frozen silence dropped over the central drill grounds, heavy and thick as wet burial shrouds.
Lu Chen stood twenty paces from the base of the central watchtower.
His bare forearms were crossed over his chest, his wolf-skin cloak drawn back over his shoulders to vent excess heat into the frozen ground.
Even in the dead of winter, his seventy-degree blood heat pushed steady plumes of white steam from his collar and ears.
The heat melted a three-foot ring of black mud and slush around his iron-shod boots.
